Stevie-winner Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is an American multinational brokerage firm. It operates the largest electronic trading platform in the United States by number of daily average revenue trades. The company brokers stocks, options, futures, EFPs, futures options, forex, bonds, funds, and some cryptocurrencies.

IBKR conducts its broker/dealer business on over 150 market destinations worldwide, providing direct access (“online”) trade execution and clearing services to institutional and professional traders for a wide variety of electronically traded products including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, gold, crypto, and funds.

IBKR is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, and has over 2,650 employees in its offices in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Hungary, India, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), Japan, Singapore, and Australia.

IBKR won a Gold Stevie Award for their mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors called IMPACT.

IMPACT by Interactive Brokers
IMPACT is a mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors that is bringing transparency to investing. IBKR believes that everyone should know as much as possible about the business practices of the companies they invest in. IMPACT was created as the simplest way to invest in companies that are aligned with the values investors care most about.

IMPACT allows investors to select their personal investment criteria from 13 impact values and principles: Clean Air, Pure Water, Ocean Life, Land Health, Consumer Safety, Ethical Leadership, Gender Equality, Racial Equality, LGBTQ Inclusion, Company Transparency, Sustainable Product Lifecycle, Mindful Business Models, and Fair Labor & Thriving Communities.

Investors can also exclude investments based on 10 categories: animal testing, business ethics controversies, corporate political spending and lobbying, energy-intensive, fossil fuels, greenhouse emissions, hazardous waste, high water usage, tobacco, alcohol and gambling, and weapons and gun manufacturers.

Based on these selections, the app provides impact scores on existing portfolios and holdings and identifies companies that align with investors’ selected criteria. Ultimately, IMPACT makes it easy to find and invest in companies that share your values, helping to better align your portfolio with the kind of world you want to create.

IMPACT: Post-Launch
Since launching IMPACT by IBKR, the team has continued to evolve the product to better enable access across the globe. This includes not only regularly reevaluating and enhancing the app’s tools to further educate clients and simplify sustainable journeys, but also adding new features such as “Carbon Offsets,” which allows users to take control of and reduce their individual carbon emissions.

Looking forward, they aim to continue to develop and introduce new features as part of their ongoing effort to encourage investment that will ultimately improve lives today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.

Interactive Brokers won a Gold Stevie Award in App & Mobile Website - Financial Services/Banking in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner OSMEAC Solutions is one of America's leading-edge accounting consulting firms. They are considered to be in the top 1% of accounting and finance professionals and are publicly marketed as such by their network partners.

With a mission to be "Mercenaries of the Business World," OSMEAC Solutions works to ensure that every client has clear and legible accounting records, financial foresight, and the ability to make sound business decisions. They utilize a fully remote team that spans the United States, assisting clients across North America and now Europe, and facilitating the future evolution of back-office workforce solutions.

President and Founder Charlie Osborne, a US Marine veteran, grew OSMEAC Solutions from $120,000 per year in revenue from 2019 to over $1.2 million in annual revenue in one and a half years, with revenue projected to double over the next 12 months.

From Military Service to Consulting Services
After separating from service with the US Marine Corps, Charlie earned both his bachelor’s and Master's degrees in Accounting. He went on to work for several companies and industries in construction, gaining skills related to SaaS, Tech, Education, Insurance, and eCommerce. He held every position in the accounting and finance field before leaving the corporate world as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and starting his own Contract CFO firm.

After a few years on his own, seeing the lack of communication and full-service offerings from other firms in his field, he brought a team of highly skilled individuals together to provide a wide array of services to best meet his client’s needs on a contracted basis.

Navigating the Pandemic
In 2020, COVID-19 hit most companies hard. Charlie continued to provide support to his clients despite not always getting paid on time, or at all due to the hardships that were endured. As a result, Charlie found a way to continue growing his business tenfold from 2020 to 2021.

With that growth, he was able to hire over 13 employees in a very short time frame and give opportunities to those in the accounting industry who had been laid off or put out of business. That number continues to grow, with a plan to add 5 more accounting professionals in the next few months.

OSMEAC Solutions provides a fully remote work environment, staying ahead of the curve from most accounting professionals that are afraid to make the jump. Charlie hired employees in 10 different states, and that allowed OSMEAC Solutions to service clients nationally, but also internationally where there is a need for back-office support in an era of increasing mergers and acquisitions.

Through Charlie's leadership skills gained while leading Marines in high-stress combat situations, he has honed-in on the needs of people, clients, and employees to help everyone find that success they are looking for. He attributes his success to his Marines, employees, clients, and family who have helped shape him into the leader he is today.

Since Winning a Stevie Award
OSMEAC Solutions has continued to provide a fully remote, flexible work environment to retain and hire the top accounting talent in the United States. They now provide back-office accounting and finance solutions all over North America and Europe.

They have helped several small businesses scale by providing accurate data and reporting so business owners can make crucial decisions. OSMEAC Solutions has also moved over 6 different corporations from a cash-based accounting method to accrual to comply with US GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and gain better insight into their margins.

OSMEAC Solutions won a Gold Stevie Award for Veteran-Owned Business of the Year in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is an American multinational brokerage firm. It operates the largest electronic trading platform in the United States by number of daily average revenue trades. The company brokers stocks, options, futures, EFPs, futures options, forex, bonds, funds, and some cryptocurrencies.

IBKR conducts its broker/dealer business on over 150 market destinations worldwide, providing direct access (“online”) trade execution and clearing services to institutional and professional traders for a wide variety of electronically traded products including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, gold, crypto, and funds.

IBKR is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA, and has over 2,650 employees in its offices in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Hungary, India, China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), Japan, Singapore, and Australia.

IBKR won a Gold Stevie Award for their mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors called IMPACT.

IMPACT by Interactive Brokers
IMPACT is a mobile trading platform for socially conscious investors that is bringing transparency to investing. IBKR believes that everyone should know as much as possible about the business practices of the companies they invest in. IMPACT was created as the simplest way to invest in companies that are aligned with the values investors care most about.

IMPACT allows investors to select their personal investment criteria from 13 impact values and
principles: Clean Air, Pure Water, Ocean Life, Land Health, Consumer Safety, Ethical Leadership, Gender Equality, Racial Equality, LGBTQ Inclusion, Company Transparency, Sustainable Product Lifecycle, Mindful Business Models, and Fair Labor & Thriving Communities.

Investors can also exclude investments based on 10 categories: animal testing, business ethics controversies, corporate political spending and lobbying, energy-intensive, fossil fuels, greenhouse emissions, hazardous waste, high water usage, tobacco, alcohol and gambling, and weapons and gun manufacturers.

Based on these selections, the app provides impact scores on existing portfolios and holdings and identifies companies that align with investors’ selected criteria. Ultimately, IMPACT makes it easy to find and invest in companies that share your values, helping to better align your portfolio with the kind of world you want to create.

IMPACT: Post-Launch
Since launching IMPACT by IBKR, the team has continued to evolve the product to better enable access across the globe. This includes not only regularly reevaluating and enhancing the app’s tools to further educate clients and simplify sustainable journeys, but also adding new features such as “Carbon Offsets,” which allows users to take control of and reduce their individual carbon emissions.

Looking forward, they aim to continue to develop and introduce new features as part of their ongoing effort to encourage investment that will ultimately improve lives today, tomorrow, and for generations to come.

Interactive Brokers won a Gold Stevie Award in App & Mobile Website - Financial Services/Banking in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

 Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner LINK Agency is a Los Angeles-based social media marketing company specializing in data-driven, short-form advertising optimized for the attention span of the TikTok generation. At LINK, they seek to make ads entertaining and to empower digital content creators to become entrepreneurs with their own content.

Their patent-pending methodology links brands with TikTok trends and creative strategy to produce extremely high-performing content. They support companies with content production, media campaigns, auditing/consulting/strategy, and viral campaigns, using a combination of targeted and paid media.

LINK Agency campaigns have, to date, produced over 3 billion organic impressions and over 2 million in user-generated content. Their campaigns result in an average of $2.30 organic CPM and have a 24-hour average watch time for monthly active users.

Jewelry company Pura Vida approached LINK when they wanted to develop more disruptive campaigns on TikTok to take their presence to the next level.

The Pura Vida TikTok Campaign
Pura Vida is a jewelry company committed to providing sustainable employment for communities of artisans who handcraft bracelets to spread the “pura vida” lifestyle and ignite positive change for people and the planet.

Pura Vida got in touch with LINK Agency to gain more coverage about LINK's partnership with the influencer Charli D’Amelio and seek creative ideas for the execution of the TikTok campaign.

LINK Agency conducted a deep dive of Pura Vida’s brand identity and designed a creative
strategy for their 3-week optimal TikTok campaign to support their new product launch. They also created multiple pieces of content for the Pura Vida page, which were concentrated over a 15-day timeline for maximum impact. LINK takes a unique approach to campaigns—they are detail- and data-driven, and have a knack for picking sounds that have the potential to go viral and also reflect clients' brands perfectly.

LINK provided creative input and executional support for the production of the song and its implementation, as well as guidance about music licensing on the growing video platform – a disruptive method for establishing brand awareness at scale.

The chosen campaign song, Pura Vida Feel Like By Andrey Azizov, went viral on TikTok with over 11,000 user-generated videos and over 100 million organic views in the #ShowUsYourHappy challenge period. The use of micro creators was leveraged thereafter to amplify the challenge.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
With their Gold Stevie Award-winning campaign for Pura Vida, LINK achieved a 2.2x growth of the brand channel from 117,600 to 256,400 followers on TikTok during the 3-week promotion time. The campaign resulted in over 100 million total views from the TikTok videos using the Pura Vida sound and a total of 10.8 million likes as of May 2021.

In the last 18 months, LINK has collaborated with clients like Gameloft, Pura Vida, Supercell, Space Ape, Steve Madden, Sky Castle, Exodus, Guru Energy, Lingokids, among others. They have been hiring top-class talent to support creative needs, most recently hiring Frederico Lopes as COO and Joaquim Salgueiro as Paid Media Director. With both joining as Partners in the Company, LINK aims to raise the bar of operational excellence and continue reaching more brands and help them take advantage of new and ever-changing disruptive social media marketing opportunities.

They are also developing a new platform and implementing processes that allow clients to review, approve, and provide content feedback faster and more effectively. This will enable them to provide real-time data work and results updates to clients.

LINK Agency won a Gold Stevie Award for Influencer Marketing Campaign of the Year in The 2022 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Women-owned Saris and Things was launched in 2011 as an online-only business where customers could rent or buy traditional Indian clothing and accessories, including shoes, jewelry, and wedding clothing. Within two years, their business quickly expanded to Amazon and other online marketplaces, where they became a top seller of many brands of clothing and fine jewelry.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Saris and Things pivoted to sell face masks, hand sanitizers, gloves, and other PPE items that were suddenly in high demand. In 2021, they again expanded their inventory to sell COVID test kits and lab supplies under their DBA SNT Biotech. By staying alert to customer needs and adapting quickly, Saris and Things was able to thrive during a time of rapid, global change and uncertainty.

Determining and Prioritizing Customer Needs
Before the pandemic began in 2020, Sari and Things was an exclusive online business selling or renting traditional Indian clothing and accessories to customers at a fraction of retail prices. They feature large collections for men and women of pre-pleated saris, lehengas, anarkalis, and sherwanis for Indian weddings and Bollywood-themed parties. They also offer group discount codes and assistance to brides, event organizers, and wedding planners.

As soon as the need for face masks became clear, they immediately began selling cloth face masks in their online storefronts. In fact, they were one of the first Amazon sellers to sell cloth face masks in March 2020, selling thousands of masks since. They decided to offer more in-demand COVID-19 items later, including gloves, hand sanitizer, pulse oximeters, multiple types of face masks, and varying PPE items.

Remaining vigilant to broader market needs in this economic environment, Saris and Things DBA SNT Biotech then began reaching out to laboratories to offer PPE products and  lab consumables like swab kits, tubes, and biohazard bags. They realized the market potential in this evolving market and mobilized operations to expand this arm of their company even further.

Upon request from many of their lab customers, SNT Biotech started assembling their own FDA-registered PCR collection kits and distributing them throughout the USA. By 2021, they had become one of the largest wholesale suppliers of PCR and rapid-antigen tests, delivering to over 500 laboratories and hospitals.

During a time when many businesses were struggling to survive, Sari and Things found a way to pivot and become part of the solution to combat the COVID crisis. Although they started out in the fashion industry for a niche group of consumers, they took the leap to drastically alter and expand their inventory and client network. This foresight and adaptability enabled them to save their business from shutting its doors. At the same time, they were able to help countless individuals, hospitals, and laboratories gain access to essential PPE,  test kits, and medical supplies.

Since Winning Their Stevie
Sari and Things, DBA SNT Biotech has seen its revenue grow by over 2000% since winning their Silver Stevie Award. Today, they are one of the leading national suppliers of Hospital Supplies, Lab Consumables, PCR collection kits, and OTC and POC Rapid Antigen test kits to labs and hospitals around the country.

Saris and Things, Inc. won a Silver Stevie Award for Fastest Growing Company of the Year Among Companies with Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner ThreatModeler™ is a collaborative platform where security experts or non-security professionals alike can visualize design flaws within a few hours or minutes instead of weeks. ThreatModeler software was created to address the shortcomings of data flow diagrams, bring threat modeling capabilities in-house, and make it scalable. The vision for ThreatModeler software is to be able to model ALL the threats, automatically, with no security expertise required.

ThreatModeler provides 100+ Fortune 1000 companies to secure highly sensitive, regulated, complex, specialized, and global environments with a holistic view of the entire attack surface to minimize overall risk.

Traditionally, threat modeling was a resource and time heavy process – manual and non-collaborative. ThreatModeler is a collaborative platform where security experts or non-security professionals alike can visualize design flaws within a few hours or minutes instead of weeks.

For example, imagine a threat model that is more representative of today’s complex architectures. One that depicts how a hacker moves through a system, identifying where they’ll attack, and more importantly, what controls are required to mitigate it. Now imagine if your developers could use this threat modeling tool in-house, with little to no security expertise, little to no learning curve and without the needleless expense of an outside security consultant.

How is that possible? By using the same language and diagrams to model threats that developers already use. By making threat modeling just another step in the software development lifecycle. Data flow diagrams don’t do a good job of modeling threats in modern system architectures. And hiring outside security consultants to create custom threat models doesn’t scale. That's where ThreatModeler software comes in. Their unique methodology automatically and seamlessly integrates security within existing agile and DevOps workflows.

ThreatModeler is also innovating in threat modeling for cloud, with automation capabilities delivering instant, threat model-building functionality to save organizations vast amounts of time and enable collaboration—people can work on DevOps with security built in.

In line with these security principles, ThreatModeler released the CloudModeler in 2022, its flagship product in securing cloud infrastructure from design to deployment. Their CloudModeler software earned a Silver Stevie Award for New Product & Service - Cloud Platform in The 2022 American Business Awards.

CloudModeler Release
Optimizing ThreatModeler’s automated capabilities, CloudModeler enables organizations to implement true DevSecOps, providing actionable insights through continuous monitoring, empowering teams to discover unknown flaws in real-time. Designed with cloud migration in mind, CloudModeler enables DevOps teams to now detect security flaws before they become code vulnerabilities, enabling instant remediation, mitigating risk, and ensuring compliance post-deployment.

Through its integration with CI/CD and ALM toolchain, ThreatModeler empowers security architects, developers, and operations to keep track of mitigation progress until the architecture threat modeled is production ready. ThreatModeler also enables DevOps to scale with its patented Threat Model Chaining feature—entire or part of threat models can be nested as their own components into other threat models. Any changes to the threat model are reflected in the models in which they are nested.

ThreatModeler empowers enterprise IT organizations to map their unique secure requirements and policies directly into their enterprise cyber ecosystem – providing real-time situational awareness about their current threat portfolio and risk conditions.

Since winning their Silver Stevie Award, ThreatModeler has been working hard to bring a new version of the product to market. They have also invested heavily in their people and are making great strides in educating and working with customers.

ThreatModeler Software Inc. won a Silver Stevie Award for New Product & Service - Cloud Platform in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Raffetto Herman Strategic Communications (RH Strategic) is a leading public relations (PR) agency working to introduce the world to the next generation of innovators in technology, cybersecurity, government, and healthcare.

Based in Washington, DC, and Seattle, Washington, USA, the firm combines deep market expertise with creative storytelling and communications strategy to deliver meaningful, measurable PR results for clients.

John Raffetto and David Herman founded RH Strategic in 2008 with the belief that tying great work to business objectives drives results and transforms companies into industry leaders. Their team has extensive, professional backgrounds in technology, government, and healthcare. Over time, RH Strategic has grown into a national firm of over 40 dedicated PR professionals with east and west coast offices.

RH Strategic won two Gold Stevie Awards in The American Business Awards® 2022 competition for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in both the Healthcare and Public Affairs categories. Both Gold-winning campaigns were developed on behalf of two companies who are disrupting industries within their services: PlushCare and CYBER.ORG.

PlushCare
San Francisco-based company PlushCare is a virtual primary and mental healthcare company that grew exponentially during the COVID pandemic. Rather than focusing on technology, PlushCare takes a people-first approach. The company only hires physicians from the top 50 medical institutions in the country and empowers patients to choose their own PlushCare doctor, who then becomes their “go-to” doctor for ongoing care. This allows for more trusted, personalized patient and provider relationships, leading to better care.

PlushCare tasked agency partner RH Strategic to help the company raise its visibility among consumers and potential investors to continue its rapid growth trajectory. In pursuit of this, the team set the following activities into motion:

• Identified spokespeople
• Developed messaging
• Developed a robust media list, reaching key audiences
• Targeted high-profile consumer publications to educate readers
• Leveraged key spokespeople to develop thought leadership platforms
• Conducted broad research on the media landscape
• Hosted discovery calls with subject matter experts
• Conducted a competitive analysis

RH Strategic reached its objectives and secured nearly 2 billion potential monthly readers with 31 key placements in publications such as HuffPost, Shape, Livestrong, and more, with 110 syndications reaching nearly 1.4 billion additional readers. They also secured 15 articles reaching a total of 606 million potential monthly readers in top US business publications such as Forbes, Business Insider, TheWall Street Journal and others.

Through the work of this campaign, PlushCare was able to earn the attention of Accolade, which acquired PlushCare for $450 million dollars in June 2021.

CYBER.ORG
A nonprofit funded by the US Department of Homeland Security, CYBER.ORG’s mission is to provide a free cybersecurity curriculum to K-12 educators nationwide by inspiring students to pursue careers in cybersecurity.

CYBER.ORG spearheaded the development of the first ever K-12 Cybersecurity Learning Standards to introduce uniform standard cybersecurity curriculum across all 50 states and provide educators with a roadmap for teaching cybersecurity to all students.

In partnership with RH Strategic, CYBER.ORG was able to elevate its thought leadership on the national stage and create visibility for its National K-12 Cybersecurity Learning Standards over a 12-month period via the following strategies:

• Researching the industry landscape
  
• Developing press advisories, messaging, pitches, and bylines
• Highlighting support of the standards with over 70 social media posts
• Drafting testimony for Congressional hearings and promoted through blog content
• Developing a robust influencer engagement program
• Examining legislation

Through a variety of tactics, including media engagement, social media, events, and influencer engagement, RH Strategic reached its objectives and generated visibility of CYBER.ORG’s National K-12 Cybersecurity Learning Standards among policymakers, government agencies, federal and state government, and cybersecurity and education experts.

Current Focus
Since winning the Gold Stevie for “Healthcare Campaign of the Year,” RH Strategic continues to position its healthcare clients—payers, providers, pharma/biotech, and health IT companies—
as leaders pushing the healthcare industry forward. Most recently, the RH Strategic team has focused storytelling on how the pandemic has permanently changed the patient experience and where innovation is still needed to improve health outcomes and lower costs.

RH Strategic and PlushCare continue to work together to inform patients about the benefits of
virtual primary care and mental health care. Through proactive media outreach and creative content development, the team has secured opportunities for PlushCare executives, primary care doctors and therapists to be featured in The New York Times, Business Insider, STAT, NPR, U.S. News & World Report, and several community-based media outlets. 

Since winning “Public Affairs Campaign of the Year,” RH Strategic continues to position its public affairs clients—technology, cybersecurity and healthcare companies—as leaders advocating for meaningful change inside the DC Beltway and beyond.

Recently, RH Strategic has focused its public affairs efforts on helping guide policies that improve nationwide response to cybersecurity incidents and encourage policymakers to prioritize legislation that further develops the technology workforce.

The RH Strategic team and CYBER.ORG continue to work together to help improve K-12 cybersecurity literacy nationwide. Through meaningful stakeholder engagement, messaging and strategic storytelling, the team helped CYBER.ORG launch the first-ever National Cybersecurity Education Month in June 2022, which was introduced in Congress.

RH Strategic won Gold Stevie Awards for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year in both Healthcare and Public Affairs categories in The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Stevie-winner Anuvia Plant Nutrients manufactures high-efficiency, sustainable bio-based fertilizers for the agriculture, turf, and lawncare industries. Located in Winter Garden, Florida, USA, the company developed and uses a unique technology that not only optimizes nutrient availability and efficiency for plants, but also improves soil health, preserves natural resources, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Feeding the World, Starving the Landfill
By harnessing regenerative agriculture, Anuvia Plant Nutrients has developed a high-efficiency, sustainable bio-based fertilizer that not only optimizes nutrient availability and efficiency for plants, but also improves soil health, preserves natural resources, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The company’s proprietary technology effectively re-uses organic materials, such as food or livestock waste. Anuvia upcycles this waste into bio-based plant nutrients that work with the ecosystem, not against it, to maximize agriculture production now and for the long term. Its products improve the health of the soil and reduce the environmental impact of fertilization while empowering farmers to implement sustainable practices that benefit the environment.

To add context, up to now, commercial agriculture has relied on synthetic inputs to feed crops, which add no organic material back into the soil. Nature’s natural process to break down plant and animal waste into usable form can take up to two years. Anuvia’s technology achieves this in minutes.

Achievements & Growth
Anuvia negotiated a partnership with one of the world’s largest companies in the agricultural sector, Novozymes, the world leader in biological solutions. The collaboration with Novozymes will bring advanced technology to plant nutrition by marrying Novozymes microbial solutions to Anuvia’s sustainable bio-based products and proprietary delivery system. This technology will further increase yield and ROI at no incremental cost to the grower while reducing nutrient loss and farming’s environmental footprint.

In February 2021, Anuvia announced a $103 million Series C capital raise led by TPG ART and Pontifax Ag. Anuvia used the financing to increase the production capacity of its new, environmentally friendly facility in Plant City, Florida, and expand commercialization to meet growing demand.

The facility now has the capacity to expand to 1.2 million tons, enough to service over 20 million acres of agricultural crops and meet the growing demand for sustainable products. This facility is a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art plant. Its manufacturing forms a closed loop in which no waste stream is created—only clean air and finished product. For every ton of organic material used, approximately a ton of fertilizer is produced.

US farmers are responsible for creating the most abundant food supply in the world––a need that will continue to grow as the population climbs to more than 9 billion by 2050. As a result, food production will need to increase from the current 8.4 billion metric tons annually to nearly 13.5 billion metric tons per year (FAO, Building a common vision for sustainable food and agriculture).

At the same time, there is growing demand by consumers and retailers for environmentally sustainable practices and products. To meet these demands, pressure is now on commercial agriculture to not only increase productivity using the same acreage, but to do it more sustainably. Enter Anuvia: by simply swapping traditional synthetic fertilizer for Anuvia’s organic-based nutrients, commercial growers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 35%. What’s more, Anuvia’s products significantly increase yield while also improving long-term soil health.

According to estimates, for every million acres that uses Anuvia’s unique technology, the reduction of greenhouse gases is equivalent to removing 20,000 to 30,000 cars from the road. If applied to only the US corn crop, which is 90 million acres, this greenhouse gas reduction would conservatively translate to 1.8 million cars removed from our roads in perpetuity.

Since winning their Gold Stevie Award, Anuvia has raised a significant round of new funding from Piva Capital and Riverstone, allowing them to rapidly scale US production of their bio-based fertilizer. This funding is needed to meet the increasing demand for sustainable solutions for commercial agriculture and is a testament to the immediate impact Anuvia is having on farmers and the industry.

Anuvia Plant Nutrients won a Gold Stevie Award for Company of the Year - Food & Beverage - Small at The 2022 American Business Awards.

Interested in entering The 2023 American Business Awards?

Today, the Stevie® Awards are widely known as the world's premier business awards, but the journey to get here did not come without risks, challenges, clear goals, determination, and a dedicated team.

Michael Gallagher founded the Stevie Awards in 2002 to honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. Thousands of nominations are submitted year after year in a myriad of categories across eight Stevie Awards programs. All organizations—public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small—may submit nominations. Entries detailing everything from achievement in product innovation, thought leadership, creative marketing campaigns, outstanding customer service, entrepreneurial ventures, and more recently, COVID-19 response, are reviewed by our respected group of judges. 

Past notable Stevie Award winners include Aflac, Apple, Chipotle, Bank of America, Ford Motor Company, IBM, ING, PayPal, Procter & Gamble, Roche Group, Samsung, and Verizon, among many others. In short order, the crystal pyramid-topped Stevie trophy has become one of the most coveted prizes in the business world. 

In the following interview responses, Michael Gallagher shares his personal background and experiences that molded the foundation and core values of the Stevie Awards.

How and why did you come up with the idea to found the Stevie Awards?

I was at a point in my life where I needed to find something else to do, after working for other people since I was 16. I enjoyed working for a company called The New York Festivals for six years in the ‘80s that staged awards for video, advertising, radio, television, and other media, and thought, I enjoyed that, but the world doesn’t need any more film festivals. But why isn’t there an “Oscars” for business?

What was your previous business experience and background before you founded the Stevie Awards?

After working for The New York Festivals for six years, I moved to the Washington, DC area and worked in the tradeshow and conference industry for seven years, then in the dot-com world in various marketing and sales roles through 2001.

What were some of your goals for the Stevie Awards when you first started the organization? Have they come to fruition and/or evolved since then?

I wanted them to become known as the “Oscars for business,” and to some extent, we’ve achieved that, but of course, we’re not as well known yet as the Academy Awards. 

What are the most challenging experiences you faced when first starting the Stevie Awards?

The first year is always the hardest for any new venture. Every process, procedure, and system has to be imagined, designed, and created for the first time. Cash was in short supply so we had to scramble for just about everything. But the advantage of having to do almost everything yourself is that you learn how to do just about everything.

How do you define success at the Stevie Awards?

A well-subscribed competition, reviewed and rated by a sufficient number of experienced professionals in the judging process, resulting in a diverse body of winners, leading to a well-attended awards ceremony that comes off without a major problem.

What is something that all Stevie Award winners have in common?

The aspiration to have their achievements recognized by a wider audience than just their colleagues.

What do the Stevie Awards mean to you?

I try not to dwell on the past too much. I think I’m very forward-thinking. I think of the Stevie Awards as a movement, rather than a company or organization. A movement toward wider public recognition of the achievements of people in the workplace, beyond the headline-grabbing billionaires who hoard so much of the news coverage of business. We’ve achieved that to a large extent in some nations and regions, and hardly at all in others. So we still have work to do.

What has surprised you most over the past 20 years with the Stevie Awards?

That I’m still doing this and enjoying every day of it.

What is your role like today compared to when you first started the Stevie Awards in 2002?

I don’t have to do everything as I did the first few years - yay! We have a good team now and I don’t fret over every little thing as I used to.

Which awards programs are most promising for future growth?

Awards programs usually grow slowly for the first few years, then grow quickly in years five through 10, say, and then grow incrementally each year after that. All eight of our programs have followed that pattern, more or less. I can’t say which of our existing programs will grow the most. Maybe it will be the ones we haven’t started yet.

What has changed the most in the past 20 years at the Stevie Awards?

There was a lot of skepticism in the early years that I’d be able to pull it off, at first, and that I’d be able to keep making it work, after that. We’re well beyond that point now. I don’t know that there are many now who doubt that the Stevie Awards are credible and here to stay.

What do you believe the next 20 years of the Stevie Awards will look like?

Wider acceptance and growth in areas that haven’t really accepted the Stevie Awards yet, such as central and South America, Japan, and other places. And a new Stevie Awards competition of some type every three to five years.

The 2022 American Business Awards® Celebrates 20 Years

The first Stevie Awards program was The American Business Awards®. In 2003, honorees of the first competition were recognized at an awards gala in New York City. Today, Monday, June 13, winners of The 2022 (20th annual) American Business Awards will be celebrated during an awards banquet at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, New York City. This event will be the first live, in-person ABA awards ceremony since June 2019. More than 520 professionals from across the USA will gather to network and celebrate one another's achievements.  

Grand, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and People's Choice Stevie® Awards will be presented to winners announced in April and May this year. TV personality Cheryl Casone will emcee the ceremony. The presentations will be live-streamed here on the Stevie Awards website and on the Stevie Awards Facebook page, beginning at 7:00 pm ET.

For a complete list of the 2022 American Business Award winners, visit www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

“We are thrilled to be able to recognize such a wide array of American organizations in The 2022 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.”  

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.

4Life Gold Factor received the most votes in the 2022 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite New Products, an annual feature of The American Business Awards®, the U.S.A.’s top business awards program, which are now in their 20th year.

The worldwide public vote was conducted last month, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of product categories. More than 46,000 votes were cast. To win, a category’s leading vote-getter had to have received at least 100 votes.

The winners of the crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be recognized during the ABA’s awards ceremony on June 13, along with the winners of the Grand, Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevies announced this Spring.

All new products and services nominated in the new product awards categories of this year’s American Business Awards were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards.

The winners of the 2022 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products are:

• AI/ Machine Learning Solution: Evisort's Contract Intelligence Platform
• Business Technology - Other: Pega Customer Decision Hub (CDH)
• Business/Competitive Intelligence Solution: Evisort's Contract Intelligence Platform
• Business-to-Business Products: Niagara's New Toilet Product Suites
• Career and Workforce Readiness Solution: VUMI(Lab)
• Cloud Application/Service: AutoLeap
• Cloud Infrastructure: CoreStack NextGen Cloud Governance
• Cloud Platform: Ericom ZTEdge
• Cloud Storage & Backup Solution: Nasuni Cloud File Services
• Consumer Electronics: OWC Atlas S Pro  SD Media Card
• Consumer Products - Household Products: Moxie Blankets Monster Protection Academy Line
• Consumer Products/Services - Other: 4Life Gold Factor
• Content Management Solution: Quark Publishing Platform NextGen
• Content Solutions - Other: First American Data & Analytics Tax Source
• Corp. Learning/Workforce Development Solution: AskNicely's Frontline Success Platform
• Customer Data Platform: BlueConic Customer Data Platform
• Digital Process Automation Solution: BeSmartee TIOS
• Education Administrative Solution: PeopleAdmin's HigherEd Platform
• Education Products/Services - Other: Savvas Learning's Experience Chemistry
• Emerging Tech Solution for Education Administrators: PeopleAdmin's Faculty Information System
• Emerging Technology: Avaya OneCloud
• Endpoint Security Management Solution: Syxsense Secure
• ERP Solution: Unit4 ERPx
• Financial Management Solution: Century Business Solutions EBizCharge
• FinTech Solution: FinLocker v3.0 App
• HCM or Talent Management Solution: hireEZ
• Healthcare Technology Solution: Capital Rx's JUDI
• Insurance Solution: BenefitMall's Marketplace
• Integration Platform as a Solution: ZigiWave ZigiOps
• International Data Protection Solution: Snapt NovaSense
• Lead Generation Solution: Digital Air Strike Response Logix 5.0
• Legal Information Solution: Evisort's Contract Intelligence Platform
• Legal Solution: Evisort's Contract Intelligence Platform
• Network Security Solution: Ericom ZTEdge
• Payments Solution: Century Business Solutions EBizCharge
• Personal Info Regulatory Compliance Solution: PKWARE's PK Protect
• Relationship Management Solution: Zift Solutions ZiftONE Virtual Event Campaigns
• Remote Working Solution: GAVS Technologies zDesk
• Supply Chain Management Solution: Avetta One Platform
• Telecommunications: Windstream Enterprise OfficeSuite Live
  
  

See the full list of People's Choice Stevie Award winners on our website, here.