Donlen of Northbrook, Illinois, USA, received a Stevie® Award for Corporate Environmental Responsibility Program of the Year—Up to 2,500 Employees in the company awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards. (The American Business Awards are now accepting entries. Download your entry kit here and submit your 2012 ABA entries by the March 28 deadline.) Here we take a closer look at what steps fleet financer and management provider, Donlen is taking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As a global provider of fleet management solutions, the corporate awards winner was concerned with the following facts:

• Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are the leading cause of climate change;

• The commercial fleet industry currently manages nearly 3,000,000 vehicles, and one-third of GHG emissions in the United States come from the transportation sector; and

• The average fleet produces nearly 9,000 metric tons of GHG annually, which is equivalent to the GHG emissions produced by burning 1,012,373 gallons of gasoline.

In 2010, Donlen stepped forward as an industry leader and became a member of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), collaborating with Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in a CGI Commitment to Action titled “Commercial Fleet 20% GHG Emissions Reduction,” and launching Fleets for Change, a fully independent website and robust reporting database.

Utilizing significant Donlen resources, Fleets for Change works with companies to help transform the environmental impact of the U.S. commercial fleet industry. This five-year commitment will help to reduce fleet emission levels by 20%, generating a reduction of more than 500,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Pledging Reductions
Any company that is committed to working to track and reduce GHG is welcome to join Fleets for Change. After joining, participants pledge reduction levels then upload their fuel usage and MPG data into a secure database. There, they can not only track their progress against their own goals, but anonymously benchmark against similar fleets with regard to vehicle type and/or class, industry, fleet size, and other criteria. (No company names or identifiers are ever disclosed to other participants.) Access to this cross-industry and fleet data is unprecedented in the fleet management industry.

Creating Change
The organization awards winner's commitment to creating meaningful industry change is easily recognizable through their Fleets for Change initiative:

• This is an industry-wide initiative open to any fleet that wishes to participate, whether or not they are a Donlen customer. Fleets for Change is a fully secure, independent site.

• There is no cost for a company to participate in Fleets for Change. Donlen is underwriting all associated costs of the site, database, reporting, and analysis.
  
  
• Donlen is committed to protecting the security of participant information: no individual data is identified or used for any purpose other than confidential reporting by Fleets for Change to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Best Practices
For companies needing assistance to identify their reduction goals and strategies, business award winner, Donlen offers best practices based on extensive experience helping their customers to develop and implement sustainability initiatives. For their customers, Donlen consultants provide performance metrics, benchmarking data, analytical support, facilitating discussions around lifecycle costs and cost reduction. These effective strategies, some of which are shared with Fleets for Change participants, help to measure and reduce fleet GHG.

Corporate award winner and CEO Gary Rappeport spearheads Donlen’s innovation and unparalleled success in the fleet industry. His focus on employee and customer satisfaction, corporate social responsibility, and environmental consciousness has put Donlen in the forefront of workplace excellence, and allowed Donlen to experience unprecedented growth under his leadership.

“The transportation industry is responsible for 28% of the overall greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” stated Rappeport.“As a leader in the fleet management industry, it’s important that Donlen takes the initiative to help reduce commercial fleet GHG on a broader scale. The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) offers us the ideal venue to address this critically important issue, and we're proud to collaborate with EDF to be part of the larger work of CGI.”

About Gary Rappeport:
Chief Executive Officer Gary Rappeport joined Donlen in 1986 and held a variety of roles prior to taking the leadership position in 1996. Named Executive of the Year-Services in The 2009 American Business Awards, Gary is committed to both employee and customer satisfaction, and developed the Donlen Service Success Chain in which annual goals are set and achievements benchmarked. Gary received a Bachelor's degree in Finance at the University of Florida and an MBA in Finance and Information Systems at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a member of the Chicago Chapter of the World Presidents’ Organization, and serves as chairman of the American Automotive Leasing Association. Gary is on the Dean's Advisory Board of the University of Wisconsin Business School. He is an active member of The Sierra Club and is diligently involved with Children's Oncology Services, Inc. Prior to joining Donlen, he held sales and management positions at NCR and HP.

About Donlen:
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Hertz Corporation (NYSE:HTZ), Donlen (www.donlen.com), with headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois, is a global provider of fleet financing and management solutions. Since 1965, Donlen has offered its clients highly personalized and responsive customer service, and their workplace excellence has been recognized as one of Crain's Chicago Business "List of 20 Best Places to Work in Chicago" each year from 2009-2011, a Leader on "The Global Outsourcing 100®" list by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) for five of the last six years, a National Association for Business Resources "101 Best and Brightest Places to Work For in Chicago" each year from 2007-2011, the 2012 Gold Stevie® Award winner for Business Intelligence, and the 2012 Silver Stevie Award winner for Front Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The Receivables Exchange of New Orleans, Louisiana USA won a Stevie Award for Management Team of the Year in the management awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards. The ABAs are open to all organizations in the U.S.A.  The 2012 edition opens for entries in October.

The Receivables Exchange, founded in 2007 by Nicolas (Nic) Perkin and Justin Brownhill, allows businesses to sell their receivables to a global network of institutional investors and access working capital in as little as three days. With remittance terms now as much as 180 days, The Receivables Exchange is a welcome financial tool for small and mid-sized businesses, particularly in the current economic climate.

Working in the Dark

Although the concept for The Receivables Exchange seemed straightforward, there was no blueprint for making the Exchange work. The closest model, the New York Stock Exchange, had nearly 200 years to get everything right. Even building a team was difficult, since Justin Brownhill and Nic Perkin needed to find specific talent for a business model that didn’t exist.

According to its two founders, building the company was like walking through a dark, windowless room: they had no reference points, and could not see the walls. There were moments when it seemed that the Exchange would not come to fruition, but Justin and Nic persevered.

Nic’s idea for The Receivables Exchange was to provide growing companies with business financing. His experience in starting and growing companies led him to conceptualize new and faster means of getting working capital. Where Nic envisioned the idea of modernizing accounts receivable, Justin conceptualized the market model: standardization, transparency, centralization, and competition. Justin drew from his years of experience in exchange strategy and trading technology to structure a marketplace where accounts receivable could be funded and traded like other assets on an electronic platform.

A Competitive Marketplace

The result is a real-time, online, competitive marketplace for accounts receivable that gives companies the ability to generate cash quickly and as competitively as possible.  The normal turn on a transaction is approximately 1 day at a 1 percent cost of capital.

“The ‘Management Team of the Year’ award is a testament to the ongoing commitment, innovation, and hard work of our entire Receivables Exchange team,” said Justin and Nic. “Recognition from the nation’s premier business awards program affirms the tremendous value our employees are contributing to make The Receivables Exchange the truly innovative working capital marketplace it has become.”

A Challenge to the Old Guard

Because the Exchange was pioneering a working capital solution for small and
medium-sized businesses, the old guard saw them as a threat. Some of the factoring industry associations blackballed The Receivables Exchange from working with many of its members, whom the Exchange had counted on to be among their clients.

Needing the half of the equation that would buy receivables, Justin and Nic found an entirely new and unconventional set of institutional buyers. Because these buyers had never purchased receivables before, the Exchange needed to take the extra step of educating them on the value of receivables and how it would benefit them.

Explosive Growth

Since the early days of struggle, the Exchange has grown its business to now
have the best of Wall Street investors. Fortune 100 companies were so impressed with The Receivables Exchange that they the requested that the Exchange set up the Commercial Receivables Paper Market for their receivables. Although these larger cash-rich companies have access to other means of liquidity, they came to the Exchange as they recognized the value in an online receivables marketplace with a diverse pool of investors.

Participation by these corporations is validation that the Exchange is changing the landscape of business financing, and it has quickly become a mainstream cash management tool for companies of all sizes.

The Receivables Exchange saw 466% growth in 2010. This nearly five-fold rise indicates that businesses are embracing the Exchange’s online marketplace as a method of managing cash flow and are taking advantage of this unique opportunity.  Quite an accomplishment for a market built from scratch only a few years ago.

The Receivables Exchange LLC is a subsidiary of the New Orleans Exchange (NOE).

About the Co-Founders

CEO & co-founder Justin Brownhill’s entrepreneurial spirit was instilled at a young age at his father’s knee. On Wall Street, Justin was one of the youngest, most successful bankers at Salomon Brothers, UBS, and DLJ, where he worked on over $100 billion in M&A transactions and some of the industry’s largest underwritings.

Brownhill earned a Bachelor of Commerce with distinction from the Faculty of
Management at the University of Calgary, Canada. In 1994 he helped start Minds Matter, a NYC-based volunteer organization, which helps disadvantaged inner-city high school students prepare and get selected for higher education
opportunities.

At the age of 15, president & co-founder Nic Perkin cleared $500 per week walking dogs. He bought stocks with the money to help to pay for college and went on to receive a Master of Science in Finance from the London Business School and a Bachelor of Arts from Tulane University. 

As head of Global Business Development of Massive, Inc., a provider of software and services, he spearheaded the company’s North American strategic initiatives to host advertisements within video games. In 2010, Nic was nominated to serve as the Vice Chairman of the Louisiana Innovation Council, which was ratified unanimously by the Louisiana State Legislature and approved by Governor Bobby Jindal.

About The Receivables Exchange

The Receivables Exchange is a first-to-market, real-time, online marketplace for working capital financing that provides a game-changing solution for both small and large U.S. companies. The Exchange connects a global network of accredited Buyers to businesses (Sellers) in search of flexible, affordable, and continuous access to working capital. Buyers get direct access to a $17 trillion new investable asset that comprises the largest asset class in the U.S. credit markets. Sellers gain prompt and highly cost-effective access to the capital they need, without onerous constraints.

Tom Crowley, CEO of MBX in Wauconda, Illinois, USA won the Stevie Award for Executive of the Year in Computer Hardware in The 2011 American Business Awards. He is the driving force behind MBX’s expansion in 2010, and for the previous fifteen consecutive years of growth.

What are your top 3 tips for keeping up business growth during a downturn?

My advice is simple:

1. Constant customer communication;
2. Diligent business development;
3. Keep marketing!
   

What item of news recently caught your eye and why?

Jim Hendry, the Chicago Cubs (baseball team) General Manager, just got fired.  They should have given him another chance! Why did this catch my eye? Because I love the Cubs.

Do you have a favorite business app?

Signal, a homegrown app that our developers created to allow the company to operate at maximum efficiency. It has personalized dashboards that allow each employee to have instant access to just what they need. It’s awesome!

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?

Musician.

(Before entering the business world, Tom Crowley was a musician whose band, Idle Tears, released an album on the MCA label and opened for the Beach Boys in 1984.)

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?

Honesty, integrity, creativity, and guts.

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?

My worst habit is that I am easily distracted. I know that if I could kick that, my job would be much easier.

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?

I don’t think that I could be considered at the “top of my profession." There are so many others out there who do what I do much better. Not to sound corny, but I think of my occupation as a journey—more of a road than a climb.

Besides my wonderful family, what makes me hit the ground running and inspires me is the fact that my job always changes. The road is never straight or flat. I do have consistent duties and requirements to help keep us going, but the challenges of the job are always in flux, which makes it fun and inspirational. Plus I have the best team of people in the world to work with, and I want to make sure that I can always provide them with the tools they need to be successful. We are all in this together.

About Tom Crowley

Tom Crowley is the CEO of MBX Systems. He founded the company in 1995 as a mail-order supplier of hard drives and, later, computer components. By 2003 he had transitioned MBX to focus exclusively on the server appliance market, providing software developers with the option to deliver their applications on hardware optimized for trouble-free customer deployment. He previously had a successful business-development career at Telecom Corporation.

About MBX Systems

MBX Systems specializes in the configuration, manufacturing, and deployment of server appliances and optimized systems for software application developers and service providers. MBX combines turnkey hardware programs with value-added services including platform configuration, hardware branding, inventory management, global logistics, product support, and system warranties.

Michelle King Robson, Founder, Chairperson, and CEO of EmpowHER Media in Scottsdale, Arizona USA, was named Chairman of the Year in the management awards categories of The 2011 American Business Awards, the top awards program in America recognizing achievements in the workplace.  (Entries for the 2012 edition of the ABAs will open in October - join the mailing list.)

What do you see as the top 3 changes/innovations in health care for women around the world?

1. Technology is making it far easier for women to take charge of their health and to be better informed through sites such as EmpowHER.com and many others.

2. Because of this technology, more women are voicing their health concerns or making their own decisions.  For too long women have suffered silently—maybe it’s something in our DNA—but now we need to take charge of everything that affects our health.

3. Women are physically different from men (surprise) so we shouldn’t have to rely on drug trials that are based on results in men only.  Currently only 37% of clinical trials target women’s health issues, and we have to change this.

There’s still so much that needs to change, but technology is a real game changer. Now women anywhere can get the information they need to make informed decisions.  This will have a positive impact globally.

What items of news recently caught your eye and why?

The biggest story in health care recently has been what’s going on in the field of biotechnology, and not just for women.  There is a story coming out about something called DRACO being tested by researchers at MIT.  It is possible that we will soon have a cure for the common cold, flu, and all kinds of viral infections.  This could be as big as the discovery of penicillin.

I was also powerfully moved by the story of Diana Nyad, a 61-year-old- woman, who—even though she didn’t make it from Cuba to the Florida Keys—managed to swim 103 miles. Not too shabby!  (And she might have completed the swim with the aid of DRACO …)   Nyad said: “60 is the new 40,” and at EmpowHER we truly believe that you can accomplish anything, regardless of age. Nyad is an inspiration to all women.

One final story I have to mention is that, after all these years, women in the U.S.A. will finally be getting free birth control.  Viagra had been covered by insurance for some time, but not birth control.  It’s about time!

Do you have a favorite business app?

I am a news junky for anything to do with health care, so I have lots of apps that will channel breaking news to my iPad, including Flipboard.

If you could choose another profession, what would it be?

I would have loved to have attended medical school and studied to be a doctor.  As you can guess, health has always been my passion.  When I was a girl there was not a lot of emphasis on higher education for women, but times have changed, and I am making sure that my own daughter receives a degree.  Nonetheless, I don’t feel hampered by not having done this myself, and it hasn’t stopped me from achieving what I wanted.  My mother always told me:  “You can be whatever you want.”  And she was right.

What quality or qualities do you most value in your business associates?

The team at EmpowHER Media has great passion for what they do: they work tirelessly to support my vision. They are dedicated to innovation, challenging the norm, and on finding new ideas or new ways to do things better.  I always try to hire people who are smarter than I am and who can execute my vision. We now have an amazing team here in Scottsdale, Arizona.

What do you think is the worst bad habit to have at work?

Settling for second best. I have no patience for mediocrity. “No, we can’t” is not an acceptable answer in my office.

As someone at the top of your profession, what keeps you inspired or makes you hit the ground running in the morning?

Women have been short-changed in health care because no one has stood up for them. I believe that anything to do with our bodies should be the individual’s choice.  Fortunately I have been able to make my voice heard and have been able to act as an advocate for women in health matters. I feel honored and privileged to be making a difference for women’s lives In the U.S. and around the world.

About Michelle King Robson
As Founder, Chairperson, and CEO of EmpowHER Media, Michelle King Robson has combined a successful track record as a business woman and entrepreneur with nearly two decades of civic and community leadership to lead what is today one of the fastest-growing digital-media companies in the world, focused on her passion for improving women's health. Michelle started the company following her personal struggle with a debilitating health issue. A tireless voice for women and the visionary behind EmpowHER, Michelle, a nationally recognized women’s health advocate, travels the world talking to women's groups, health care organizations, political leaders, regulatory bodies, and the media about women's health and wellness issues, and about the importance of women advocating for themselves and their loved ones. Her goal is to drive innovation and change in health care for women around the world.

About EmpowHER
EmpowHER Media is an award-winning, HON-certified health media company for women. The Company's flagship and Top 5 women's health and wellness site—EmpowHER.com—is an online community for female health consumers. We call them Chief Health and Wellness Officers of the Home. EmpowHER.com provides visitors access to one of the largest women's health and wellness content libraries on the Web, as well as one of the most active online communities of women discussing their health and wellness issues. Health care professionals, health and wellness marketers, and agency professionals rely on EmpowHER Media for reaching the most influential health and wellness buyer on the Internet: women. Millions of women visit EmpowHER.com every year, making it one of the largest and fastest-growing resources dedicated exclusively to women's health and wellness.

This week we've been recognizing the contributions of the more than 200 professionals worldwide who participated in the judging process for The 8th Annual International Business Awards, the world's premier business awards program, and today we acknowledge the participation of those on the Management Awards judging committee, which included

Allyson Stewart Allen, Director, International Marketing Partners, London, United Kingdom
Esther Oh, Deputy Director, Commercial Services, CITIC Pacific Mining Management Pty Ltd, South Perth, WA Australia
Valerie Ondes, CFO, High Frequency Economics, Valhalla, NY USA
Janine Popick, CEO & Founder, VerticalResponse, San Francisco, CA USA
Jacqueline Teo, General Manager, Programme Management Office, FOXTEL, Putney, Australia
Han Tjan, VP-Corporate Communications, Daimler, New York, NY USA

The committee was chaired and formed by Yvonne Howie, CEO, The CEO Institute, Neutral Bay, NSW Australia.

The average scores of the members of this committee determined the 2011 Stevie Award winners in categories such as Management Team of the Year, Executive of the Year, and Chairman of the Year.  The full list of honorees in these categories is online, but some notable Stevie Award winners this year include:

• The management team at iolo technologies, Los Angeles, CA USA
• Fujio Cho, Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation, Aichi, Japan
• Catherine A. Lesjak, Chief Financial Officer and Executive VP, Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA USA
• Mukesh D Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited, Mumbai, India
• Jose Ignacio Sanchez Galán, CEO, Iberdrola SA, Bilbao, Spain
• Mugheer Al Khaili, Director General, Abu Dhabi Education Council, Abu Dhabi, UAE

The awards will be presented at the 2011 IBA awards presentations in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, 11 October. Tickets are now on sale.

What do you think of the list of honorees in the management categories this year?

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Josef von Rickenbach, Chairman & CEO of PAREXEL International Corporation, with global headquarters located in Waltham, Massachusetts U.S.A., was named Executive of the Year in North America in the management awards categories of The 2010 International Business Awards.  Here we profile his company and what it has achieved in nearly three decades.

Founded in 1982 by Joseph von Rickenbach, PAREXEL supports pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical-device companies throughout the world in the successful development and launch of products.  Over the past 29 years the company has helped bring some of the most important treatments of our time to the patients who need them. PAREXEL has supported nearly all of the 50 top-selling drugs on the market, and has marked several firsts throughout its history, including helping to achieve one of the fastest drug-development times to date for an HIV/protease inhibitor.

 

Recently, PAREXEL has achieved marketing approval for among the first biosimilar drugs worldwide, helping to advance new versions of innovator biopharmaceutical products following patent expiry.

On a Mission
Under Mr. von Rickenbach’s leadership, PAREXEL’s mission has been clear: to prevent and cure disease. “We have maintained a clear focus on combining the strength of our expertise, experience, and innovation to advance the success of the biopharmaceutical industry in achieving this,” he said.

A proof point of this mission is PAREXEL’s work with biopharmaceutical companies to improve development success rates for oncology drugs. In 2009 the company announced it had reached a milestone in managing oncology-based clinical trials over the last five years. The trials involved over 175,000 patients in hundreds of programs across 80 countries—a critical achievement given that approximately 10 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year worldwide.

A Vision for Global Drug Development
Mr. von Rickenbach foresaw that pharmaceutical companies with separate national operations needed service providers that combined an international presence with the technology capabilities that would help develop and commercialize drugs for burgeoning international markets. By investing in this vision, PAREXEL has acted as an effective catalyst in this trend.

Today, PAREXEL has helped biopharmaceutical companies transcend national boundaries by providing access to a wide array of geographies for clinical development programs, and offering technologies that facilitate global trials and reduce associated time and cost.

A New Level of Strategic Partnership
Working with PAREXEL's management team, Mr. von Rickenbach has transformed the business in recent years to deliver a new level of strategic partnership.  

In 2009 PAREXEL established The Expert Office™, signaling a new level of strategic partnering that provides a single point of contact for clients to more quickly access PAREXEL’s worldwide expertise.  This service aligns the company’s leading medical, therapeutic-area, regulatory, and clinical operations experts with their counterparts at biopharmaceutical companies. This consolidation of knowledge helps biopharmaceutical companies make faster, better-informed development and commercialization decisions and accelerate clinical research.

International Recognition
After receiving the Stevie Award, Mr. von Rickenbach said: “I am honored to be recognized by the judges of The International Business Awards.  I am proud of PAREXEL’s achievements, including the continued commitment of our employees worldwide to deliver on our goal to be a premier partner to the biopharmaceutical industry."

In addition to the recognition of Mr. von Rickenbach, the eClinical Suite from Perceptive Informatics, a subsidiary of PAREXEL, was named in The International Business Awards as Distinguished Honoree in the category of Best New Product or Service of the Year:  Computer Software—New Version.  This honor recognized PAREXEL’s focus on innovation and continuous investment in the next generation of technologies to accelerate clinical development.

About Josef von Rickenbach
Josef von Rickenbach has taken PAREXEL from pioneering beginnings as one of the first clinical research organizations in the early 1980s to its place today as one of the top three public biopharmaceutical services providers. As Chairman and CEO of PAREXEL, Mr. von Rickenbach was one of the first to define the clinical research service sector. To make clinical development more effective for clients, he conceived a multidisciplinary and systems-oriented approach to outsourced clinical development, bringing efficiencies, scalability, and standardization to the process.

Mr. von Rickenbach has led PAREXEL through its IPO, multiple public offerings, and over 30 acquisitions to expand its portfolio in order to meet changing client needs and market demand. Under his leadership, PAREXEL has evolved to provide a broad range of services to the biopharmaceutical industry, including integrated clinical development, regulatory affairs consulting, commercialization services, and technologies that expedite time-to-market. Mr. von Rickenbach’s extensive experience in the biopharmaceutical services industries puts him at the forefront of drug development and management. He began his career with Schering-Plough and also held positions with ENSECO (formerly ERCO). 

Mr. von Rickenbach has served as Chair of the Association of Clinical Research Organizations (ACRO), and is a longstanding member of the ACRO Board of Directors. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the New England Healthcare Institute. He holds a B.S. degree in Business Economics from the School of Business at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University.

About PAREXEL
PAREXEL International Corporation is a leading global biopharmaceutical services organization, providing a broad range of knowledge-based contract research, medical communications, and consulting services to the worldwide pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries. For more information about PAREXEL visit www.PAREXEL.com.  

Today we've published the entry kit for The 2011 (9th annual) American Business Awards.  Get your entry kit on the ABA web site.  The ABAs are the premier business awards program in the U.S.A., honoring achievement in every facet of the workplace.

The ABAs are open to all organizations in the U.S.A., including the U.S-based operations of foreign organizations.

There are a couple of early-bird entry deadlines this fall by which the entry fees are substantially discounted - November 17 and December 15.  The ultimate deadline is March 31, but we'll continue to accept late entries right through April 27 with payment of a late fee.

There's quite a bit new about the ABAs this year, most notably a lot of new marketing awards categories.

There are also new categories specifically for organizations in the health care industries, including Executive of the Year - Health Products & Services, and Best New Product or Service of the Year - Health Products & Services.