Stevie-winner Hooked On Code (HOC) is a women-owned, simplicity-focused WordPress website agency, working with businesses and organizations globally. 

The HOC mission is to eliminate the convoluted and inefficient nature of building websites for B2B enterprises. Their refined “no-bull process” has been delivering results efficiently since 2014. They assert that their proven process and specific toolset helps them combat negative experiences such as missed deadlines, poor communication, and hard-to-edit websites.

In mid-2019, HOC launched the maintenance branch of their agency, offering monthly website “Care Plans” to assist with website updates and whatever changes their customers may need.

Maintaining the Customer Experience Throughout the Pandemic
In 2020, HOC saw project work almost disappear with the COVID crisis. They decided to dedicate themselves to the happiness of their current client-base, which would, if retained, support the agency through the decline in new projects. 

Next, they launched a Customer Appreciation Program, including Client Appreciation Week, when clients were publicly recognized on social media and each client was personally called by team members.

They also refreshed training for the support team, compiled a new manual for working on client tickets, and started tracking client compliments and complaints in order to address potential issues preemptively.

Over time, what began as a boot-strapped company with no marketing budget saw significant organic growth year over year, completely from referrals.

In a survey sent to clients during Client Appreciation Week, 100% of participants responded 5/5 rating our work quality, timely delivery, responsiveness, satisfaction, and willingness to refer.

Hooked On Code went from being unranked in all categories to ranking between #1 and #4 out of tens of thousands of web design agencies across multiple high-value categories on Clutch, a third-party review platform for B2B service providers.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
The HOC team has added Elementor to their agency arsenal, which has allowed them to adopt maintenance retainers for websites built by other agencies, often for global-sized corporations that demand faster and more reliable service than their previous agency offered. 

They have also  since launched their first Shopify and Squarespace projects. The decision to venture outside of the WordPress/Divi toolset and into select closed-source platforms was made in response to the growing need for a lower cost product that could be easily managed by clients in-house. This allows their team to service clients who would otherwise be dependent on a maintenance plan that their business model doesn’t financially justify.

With many notable accolades and statistics to report, HOC notes that the statistic they are most proud of is that they have never missed a project launch date—ever.

Hooked On Code won a Silver Stevie Award for Achievement in Customer Satisfaction in both the 2022 and the 2023 editions of The American Business Awards®. 

Interested in entering The American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Merck Manuals is committed to making the best current medical information accessible to health care professionals and patients on every continent. They believe that health information is a universal right and that every person is entitled to accurate and accessible medical information.

First published in 1899 as a small reference book for physicians and pharmacists, The Merck Manual has since grown in size and scope to become one of the world’s most widely used comprehensive medical resources for professionals and consumers. Today its medical information is available in more than 241 countries and in nearly a dozen languages, free in digital form to professionals and patients.

As the Manual has evolved, it is continually expanding the reach and depth of its offerings to a wide cross-section of users, including medical professionals and students, veterinarians and veterinary students, and consumers.

Merck Manuals won a Bronze Stevie Award for their #MindOverMyth marketing campaign that aimed to help break the stigma surrounding discussing and seeking mental health support.

The #MindOverMyth Campaign for Mental Health Awareness
Almost half of adults experience symptoms of mental illness at some point. Despite this high prevalence of mental illness, only about 20% of people who have a mental illness receive professional help according to MerckManuals.com research. While tremendous advances have been made in the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses, the stigma surrounding them persists.

Their campaign, #MindOverMyth, seeks to further break down the stigma and bring these issues into the light so patients and health care professionals can feel more comfortable talking about mental health issues and asking for help. 

They looked at the most common mental health topics affecting both children and adults today and developed a marketing campaign with the goal of bringing greater awareness to these topics via social media through graphics and short videos as well as by driving visitors to the website to further educate themselves.

They launched the campaign in June of 2021 across all channels in the United States and then rolled out across global channels, translating each post to their respective market language. 

Thanks to the Mind Over Myth campaign, they were able to bring more awareness of mental health issues to people across the globe, accruing 18.1 million social media impressions and 1.25 million link clicks to their website content on these topics from April-December 2021.This campaign became very timely for their health care professionals in both human and animal health who were struggling to take care of themselves during the pandemic.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
In response to an urgent request from the Ukraine team to help medical professionals deliver the best care during the invasion of Ukraine, The Manuals team launched a Ukrainian translation of the site for medical professionals in record time. 

Merck Manuals won a Bronze Stevie Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year - Healthcare - Disease Education & Awareness in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering this year’s edition of The American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Antoinette Beauchamp is an empowerment mindset coach, speaker, author, and meditation teacher. As an ELI-MP (Energy Leadership Index Master Practitioner) certified coach, she inspires and challenges people to lead with passion, find balance, step into their power, and own who they were born to be so they can live with joy and ease.

Over the course of her career, Antoinette has worked with thousands of people, including influencers, entrepreneurs, and C-suite executives to help them create monumental changes in their lives to launch them into the life they've always wanted to live. 

Antoinette is the CEO and Founder of AB Coached, a premium coaching company that supports female executives and entrepreneurs on their ascension to next-level success. She won a Gold Stevie Award for Achievement in Management in Consumer Services in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Signature Principles for Success
As a Latina from the suburbs of Chicago, raised by parents who taught her never to settle, Antoinette made it her life’s work to rise above the limits of what’s possible. In 2016, after her father won his battle with stage 4 cancer, she pivoted her life direction 180 degrees to follow her dreams. She changed industries, from fashion to the wellness space, and majorly changed her lifestyle, relocating from New York City to South Florida.

Along the way, Antoinette’s signature coaching principles have helped thousands of leaders rise above their limitations. Whether she’s speaking on major stages like SXSW, hosting workshops at Fortune 500 companies, or working privately with her multi-seven-figure clients, Antoinette has made a name for herself as a prominent figure in the wellness industry. Her methodologies have also been widely shared across notable publications like Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Well+Good.

In 2020, Antoinette channeled her decade-plus of experience and launched her own premium coaching company, AB Coached, to support even more leaders who are seeking fulfillment and freedom. Her bespoke style of coaching helps women authentically step into their power and move past their limitations by learning how to embrace feminine leadership principles and break free from the status quo.

Today, entrepreneurs and leaders from across the globe—from the USA to Singapore to Canada—turn to her and her growing team. Over the last 12 months, AB Coached saw radical growth—nearly doubling revenue and tripling headcount.

From speaking on a panel for HeyMama to leading a workshop for Amazon Web Services to hosting meditations for Pernod Ricard, Antoinette seeks to get in front of as many people who need support as possible, using national platforms like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Well+Good, and others. And she did it all after an uncoupling with her co-founder, expanding her business as a solo CEO.

Curious readers can learn more by visiting www.abcoached.com and following Antoinette and the team @abcoached on Instagram.

CEO & Founder of AB Coached Antoinette Beauchamp won a Gold Stevie Award for Achievement in Management - Consumer Services in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in this year’s edition of The American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Dibbs is a marketplace platform where buyers and sellers can find materials and services more efficiently.

Dibbs is on a mission to disrupt the construction industry with the first-ever end-to-end bidding solution.

Their approach aims to take the friction out of bidding, buying, and selling products and services in the marketplace. Dibbs Technology is the first to ever solve bidding by building a tool to bid on both services and materials. Their marketplace is built to improve infrastructure, increase construction sales, and provide access to more jobs.

Dibbs earned a Bronze Stevie Award for Startup of the Year among Business Products Industries in The 2022 American Business Awards®. 

The Dibbs Marketplace
Dibbs brings automation to construction in all aspects of the bidding process for everyone, anywhere in the world. While a lot of contractors are inundated with projects already, many have expressed a need for finding the correct materials for an affordable price that fits their timeline.

Luke Fleury, Founder and CEO of Dibbs, is also a real estate developer and general contractor, so he knows firsthand the frustrations of spending countless hours to find the lowest rates on projects and materials. 

The standard process of searching and contacting various sellers often requires extensive research if your project has more than one aspect. This is what inspired him to create Dibbs, which consolidates the antiquated, paper-based processes that the construction industry is currently utilizing.

Dibbs was founded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when construction and real estate underwent massive changes. Since then, Dibbs has grown its team to nearly 50  intelligent and driven members. Members include a world-class company advisory team made up of individuals who have co-founded and advised companies like Ariba (SAP), LinkedIn, Snowflake, DocuSign, and Shyft Analytics, among others in the construction industry.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
The Dibbs application has expanded its offerings to Massachusetts, suppliers, and contractors. They have also opened the app to homeowners in Rhode Island.

In addition, they have launched a referral program which they plan to execute nationally and will provide users the opportunity to win a paid trip to Las Vegas (more information about the referral program: dibbstechnology.com/referral-program/).

Dibbs won a Bronze Stevie Award for Startup of the Year - Business Products Industries in The 2022 American Business Awards. 

Interested in entering this year’s edition of The American Business Awards?

Formed in 2017 by a group of brain tumor specialists, Stevie-winner GT Medical Technologies is an Arizona-based medical device company focused on improving the lives of patients with brain tumors.

GT has developed an innovative approach to treatment by combining a conformable collagen matrix with brachytherapy (radiation) seeds.

In January 2019, the company introduced its breakthrough medical device GammaTile® Therapy, a safe and effective Surgically Targeted Radiation Therapy (STaRT) for operable brain tumors. This product won GT a Gold Stevie Award in The 2022 American Business Awards®. 

GammaTile® Therapy
With traditional external beam radiation (EBRT), patients typically must wait for the surgical wounds to heal before starting treatment. From there, it often requires as many as 30 treatments for many consecutive weeks. Patients and families are faced with the daily burden of time and travel to the medical center.

Fundamentally different from EBRT, GammaTile Therapy is a “one-and-done” treatment, implanted at the time of brain tumor removal surgery. Treatment starts immediately and continues as patients go about their daily lives. Clinical data demonstrates that immediate radiation improves local tumor control and can extend survival in patients who are treated with surgery plus GammaTile Therapy.

In addition to sparing patients and families the time and energy that traditional EBRT treatments would require, GammaTile Therapy helps minimize patients’ potential exposure to COVID-19 and other infectious diseases by eliminating the need for ongoing radiation appointments.

Impact on Clinical Care, Patient Access
Before this therapy, there had not been an improvement to the standard treatment care protocol for patients with brain tumors in over 10 years. Even with full market release concurring with the start of a global pandemic in March 2020, resulting in significant challenges relating to hospital access, GammaTile is now in over 50 top brain tumor centers across the United States.

Currently, there is no other device on the market that can achieve what GammaTile Therapy does for its patients—it’s the first brain tumor device of its kind. Some might consider long-standing brain tumor treatments that serve as the standard of care in oncology as GammaTile Therapy's competitors. GT Medical Technologies believes it's important to individualize treatment and provide all options to the patient. Progress in cancer treatments is not about competition, it’s about expanding the array of therapies, so patients and their providers can optimize options. GammaTile Therapy was developed to meet an unmet clinical need, providing a safe and effective option for patients who had/have none.

The extended FDA clearance the company received in 2020 was a significant moment, enabling patients with newly diagnosed malignant brain tumors to become eligible for GammaTile, as opposed to just patients with recurrent brain tumors.

The clinical trials focused on GammaTile by leading healthcare institutions examine the importance of the treatment and the willingness of the healthcare community to embrace it. The clinical data noted demonstrates that immediate radiation improves local tumor control and can extend survival in patients who are treated with surgery plus GammaTile Therapy.

GammaTile data has also been published in the Journal of Neuro-Oncology Advances on December 27th, highlighting the product safety profile and favorable survival outcomes. 

GT Medical Technologies won a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year - Health Products Services in The 2022 American Business Awards.

 Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Founded in 2011, Stevie-winner Gravy Analytics is an enterprise location technology company providing actionable intelligence to businesses. Using its patented technology, the company brings data about people, places, and events together to understand human mobility, helping companies enhance their sales and marketing strategies and optimize business operations.

Gravy Analytics began as a local events discovery company, recommending interesting things consumers could do in their area. Knowing that events are often the greatest indicator of interests and passions and seeing the gap in understanding what customers do in the physical world, in 2016, Gravy pivoted to become a consumer intelligence platform. Events—and the unique context that they add to location data—remain foundational to the business and are one of Gravy’s biggest differentiators.

Today, Gravy’s intelligence powers leading-edge solutions for a wide range of industries– from advertising to market research, financial services to supply chain risk management– that rely on knowing how people, products, and materials move throughout the world.

Beyond this, Gravy Analytics believes that location intelligence should be used for social good. For select organizations whose missions align with these values, Gravy Analytics provides access to location datasets at a nominal cost through its Data for Social Good program.

For this program, Gravy Analytics won a Silver Stevie Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year for  Organizations With Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Gravy Analytics' Data for Social Good Program
As part of its Data for Social Good program, Gravy Analytics teamed up with the University of Florida Transportation Institute (UFTI) to use location analytics to examine wildfire evacuation data in hopes of helping vulnerable communities reduce risk and enhance safety during natural disasters.

To do this, UFTI researchers wanted to study the movements of local residents during the 2019 Kincade Fire in Sonoma County, California. Gravy provided UFTI with human mobility data for their study through its Observations Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) product for mobile devices seen in the evacuation zone and surrounding area of the wildfire.

The resulting data and analysis helped UFTI researchers to better understand natural disaster evacuation behaviors, support more effective emergency management, and help vulnerable communities prepare and mitigate risks.

Gravy also provided human mobility data to researchers from Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering who were working to gain a deeper understanding of how COVID-19 spreads in smaller communities.

Researchers incorporated Gravy’s data into their “Anytown, USA” simulation model that illustrates how the movement of people and different circumstances can impact COVID-19’s progression patterns in a small community. The simulation follows the movement of COVID-19 infected people in a small town for sixty days, beginning with a few infected people who subsequently go on to infect others.

Primarily designed as a tool for awareness and education, the Anytown, USA simulator can help people understand how a pandemic can spread in their community and how certain interventions and public health policies can make a difference.

Continued Progress
Gravy Analytics knows that understanding human movement patterns, and how they change over time is key to better stewardship. Location data and its derived datasets have the potential to fuel innovation within our communities and help people live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

Location intelligence lets local governments make policy decisions based on data, not opinion. It allows non-profit organizations and environmental groups to allocate scarce resources in the places where it is needed most. In times of crisis, location data can help prioritize outreach, deploy life-saving healthcare services, or direct the efforts of first responders. It can also help cities plan for the future—for skyrocketing growth, or a declining population—and inform critical infrastructure and redevelopment projects.

In short, location data can help to solve some of our society’s biggest challenges. Too often these problems are under-resourced; the great irony is that these are often the issues that most impact our everyday lives. Gravy Analytics is proud to play a part in solving these problems. The many projects that Gravy has supported through its Data for Social Good program have benefited communities both in the US and overseas.

Gravy Analytics won a Silver Stevie Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year forOrganizations  With Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Gutenberg Technology (GT) powers content management and transformation in some of the world’s leading education publishers, higher education institutions, and certification organizations. They aim to transform how companies create, re-use, and deliver content at scale to multiple and changing digital and print experiences.

Founded in 2010 and now with offices in Paris and Boston, the company’s end-to-end content management platform enables organizations to author, transform, and distribute print and digital content from a single workflow – dramatically reducing cost and time to market. The world’s largest publishers and educational institutions rely on GT to transform legacy content into new, engaging web and mobile products.

GT's end-to-end content authoring platform won a Gold Stevie Award for Content Authoring Development or Curation Solution in the New Product & Service Categories - Content in The American Business Awards®.

Gutenberg Technology's End-to-End Content Authoring Platform
Traditionally, creating, updating, and distributing educational print and digital content is a highly manual, time-consuming, redundant, and expensive process.

GT’s platform helps content creators re-engineer their processes, implementing a single, unified workflow—regardless of the end product—that enables a more agile approach to content creation and distribution. This modern approach removes cost barriers, enables more engaging learner experiences, accelerates time to market, and presents new revenue opportunities for educational content providers.

Key platform features include:

1. Efficient collaboration. Collaborate inside one user-friendly, cloud-based interface.
2. Interactive content. Easily incorporate sophisticated interactive features, including assessment tools.
3. Streamlined courseware creation. Create, scale and easily update personalized learning experiences.
4. Content reuse. Leverage legacy content to create new products and courses.
5. Simultaneous print & digital publishing. Simultaneously create and distribute to print, ebooks, mobile devices, the web or any LMS.

GT has released their first version of the highly requested IMS Common Cartridge as a new out-of-the-box export format. This new feature is aligned with their continued commitment to making content as portable as possible by enabling more standard export formats than any other authoring tool.

Common Cartridge is a specification that describes a format for creating and sharing primarily educational digital content, including courseware content for use in a third party LMS. This feature will provide customers that rely on Common Cartridge with many benefits, including easily repurposing existing content for use as courseware. This is especially remarkable if you wish to reuse content from a digital ebook and/or print book.

GT is calling this new capability the “Instant Course”: users who create a book on the platform can immediately export a course-repurposed version to Common Cartridge. This overcomes the relatively high cost barrier that prevents publishers from creating courses for upper-division, graduate, and other courses with more limited enrollment, where the economics have always been a challenge.

Creating and updating digital and print content at scale is challenging. The traditional process is manual, error prone, and inefficient. Generally, it takes publishers 12 to 18 months to create a print and digital product, and creating a digital course can take an average of six months.  Today’s “digital natives” expect feature-rich, interactive experiences, including opportunities to assess progress and create personalized learning pathways.

Since Winning Their Stevie
GT's content authoring platform offers organizations a completely revolutionary way to create content by allowing content authors to collaborate more efficiently and intuitively, ultimately speeding time to market and significantly reducing costs.

In addition, the ability to create multiple products using legacy content from within a single collaborative platform has proven invaluable to clients, saving them time and money, and drastically streamlining their creation processes.

GT is continuously innovating, introducing product updates to increase the platform's flexibility, often in response to the needs of users. Recently, they released a new one-click content reuse feature for project elements, enabling even faster and simpler creation of derivative products. On the user side, they've introduced a new "global notebook" view for mobile app users that allows them to see all their ebook annotations in one place.

The company’s acceleration reflects the large and urgent transformations that education publishers and certification providers are going through to reduce costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver more engaging student digital experiences.

GT also saw growth from higher education institutions who turned to Online Program Management (OPM) companies to help them get courses online quickly through COVID but are now seeking more cost-effective and sustainable technical solutions that better leverage their own teaching talent.

Gutenberg Technology won a Gold Stevie Award for their Content Authoring Development or Curation Solution in the New Product & Service Categories - Content in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Virtudesk is a virtual assistant company that focuses on equipping business owners in a variety of industries and verticals with remote-working professionals from the Philippines.

Virtudesk's mission is to help business owners optimize and automate company systems and processes, teach them how to delegate responsibilities, and focus on revenue-earning activities. By leveraging well-trained virtual assistants, business owners can grow and scale their businesses at cost-effective rates. 

They offer competitive rates with a streamlined process and virtual assistants well-trained in business services such as marketing, administration, customer service, prospecting and inside sales, and real estate transaction coordination. 

History 
In 2016, US-based real estate broker Pavel Stepanov was still working primarily in real estate when he realized the benefits of employing virtual assistants for his business. 

Prior to hiring assistants, he had been working 12 to 16 hours a day. Hiring a virtual Inside Sales Agent changed his life. He was able to delegate all the tedious administrative tasks that used to consume so much of his time and refocus his attention on building relationships. When he had his virtual assistant responsible for booking appointments, Pavel was able to almost triple his yearly revenue.

After seeing the results from his own experience, he started helping the agents in his brokerage hire virtual assistants. Then, he started Virtudesk to help more entrepreneurs. Starting with only one virtual assistant helping Pavel in 2016, Virtudesk has since grown by over 400%, employs hundreds of people, and serves all industries.

Virtudesk also prides itself on providing livelihood to hundreds of Filipinos. The company gives them an opportunity to work remotely, provides complete benefits, and nurtures professional growth in their role with international clients.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award 
In the time since winning their Silver Stevie, Virtudesk has secured an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. They will continue to work to further improve many of their internal systems for operational efficiency and better client experience, including training and client support.

Virtudesk won a Silver Stevie Award for Fastest Growing Company of the Year among companies with Up to 2,500 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards? 

In The 2022 American Business Awards®, TCI's Social Studies Alive! program won a Gold Stevie Award for Social Studies Instructional Solution, part of the New Product & Service Categories - Education.

Social Studies Alive!’s engaging activities, easy-to-use materials, and ELA integration help teachers bring learning alive in elementary classrooms across the country. 

TCI creates efficacious, engaging K-12 social studies programs and K-8 science programs. For more than 30 years, the company has partnered with the education community to change classroom instruction. TCI’s programs are based on proven teaching strategies and practices that achieve consistent, positive classroom results.

TCI excels at making curriculum adoption and implementation easy. They provide training with self-paced professional development courses and live webinars , as well as continuous support before, during, and after adoption. Teachers trust TCI to match interactive, standards-aligned learning experiences with unparalleled teacher support so that they can focus on student success.

TCI’s Social Studies Alive! Program
Used in thousands of elementary classrooms around the country, Social Studies Alive! immerses students in learning about their communities, country, and the world through engaging, hands-on activities. Aligned with state standards and national frameworks, such as the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies, the program is constructed with inquiry-based instruction at its core.

Social Studies Alive! also offers teachers easy-to-use lesson plans and activities for engaging their students in learning. Built-in technology guides students through multimedia and learning games while helping them grade assignments and track student progress.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
Hands-on learning and engagement are at the heart of everything TCI does. TCI's continued dedication to creating memorable classroom experiences through engaging activities, meaningful technology, and compelling content ensures that students remain invested and enthusiastic about learning.

TCI won a Gold Stevie Award in Social Sciences or Studies Instructional Solution within the New Product & Service Categories - Education in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Top Business Honors to Accept Final Nominations Through April 5

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of The American Business Awards®, announced today that the final entry deadline for the 21st annual competition has been extended through April 5. No additional late fees will be charged. Entries submitted through the new deadline will not be penalized in any way in the judging process.

“We’ve received so many requests for individual deadline extensions that we’ve decided to extend the deadline for everyone,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Miller. The original final deadline was March 8.

The American Business Awards are widely considered to be the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations— public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large, and small. The 2023 awards will honor achievements since the beginning of 2021. Entry details are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

The American Business Awards recognize achievement in every facet of the workplace. Categories include:

• Entrepreneur Awards
• Achievement Awards
• Management Awards
• Company / Organization of the Year Awards
• Customer Service Awards
• Human Resources Awards
• Technology Awards
• Marketing Awards
• New Product Awards
• Public Relations Awards
• Social Media
• Thought Leadership Awards
• Website Awards, Smartphone and Tablet Apps, and other Media Awards

More than 250 professionals nationwide will participate in the judging process through mid-April. The Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie® Award winners will be announced on April 27 and celebrated during a gala event in New York City on June 13.

Every new product or service nominated in The 2023 American Business Awards will automatically be included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, an annual feature of the ABAs in which the general public votes for their favorite new products. Voting will open on April 28.

The list of past Stevie Award winners in The American Business Awards reads like a who’s who of innovation and business success in the U.S.A. Explore the list of last year’s winners.