• Turnitin is dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and research with products used by students and educators
• The company’s Feedback Studio with Draft Coach allows students to directly improve their research and writing skills in real-time while drafting essays 
• Turnitin’s comprehensive database helps students do proper research, cite sources effectively, and deliver high-quality academic writing 

About Turnitin

Turnitin is a global company dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and research and meaningfully improving learning outcomes. Turnitin partners with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Turnitin’s products are used by students and professionals to do their best, original work.

Turnitin is well known as a company that upholds academic integrity, streamlines assessment, and encourages students to do their own work. Turnitin’s most recent offering, Turnitin Feedback Studio with Draft Coach, gives students the power to directly improve their original thinking skills while drafting assignments. Students learn by making mistakes, but learning is much more effective when those mistakes are made - and able to be corrected - before they turn in an assignment. When students can write, iterate, and revise their work, tremendous gains are made in their writing ability. Feedback Studio with Draft Coach is exactly the product to allow that interactive process to occur in Google Docs, where most students are composing essays for their courses. 

Draft Coach’s features and benefits include: 

• Students run a similarity check directly within Google Docs to ensure proper research and understand where to revise their writing prior to final submission
• Students give credit where credit is due by using Draft Coach to find any missing references and citations 
• In-app guidance helps students think critically about their similarities and citation checks
• Students tend to spend more time writing and revising before submitting their final essay, meaning that they are learning more with each iteration and also turning in better essays 
• Teachers save time because students can apply the formative feedback to correct errors and submit their own best and original work 

Turnitin Feedback Studio with Draft Coach helps students improve their academic writing and research skills by providing access to Similarity Reports and citation feedback as they draft in Google Docs. Draft Coach serves as an integrity coach that lives where students work and supports them in doing proper research, citing sources effectively, and delivering high-quality academic writing. By providing students with formative feedback on citations and matches with Turnitin’s comprehensive database of internet, student papers, and academic content, Draft Coach helps educators cultivate more independent learners and confident writers. 

Turnitin won the Gold Stevie Award for New Product & Service Categories - Education - Learning Capacity-Building Solution in The 2021 American Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2022 American Business Awards? 

After 20 years of astonishing growth, the wine market is finally facing some headwinds. And with this comes the important question: How does the industry get more consumers—particularly younger ones—interested in their product?

For one start-up, the answer is to match each drinker with the right blend, whether that’s a , a robust Cabernet Sauvignon, or a sweet Moscato. GREAT WINE, Inc., claims to be the first company to produce wine based on people’s wine personalities, or “vinotypes.”

The company is the work of Founder and CEO Danni Lin, a former Data Scientist at Microsoft who saw a need for better guidance when it came to wine.

“I know, personally, I’d go into a supermarket and get lost in the wine section,” says Lin. “I’d have to wade through massive, overwhelming product lists and ads.”

Plans for her company, which markets wines under the brand name “PERCIPIO,” didn’t solidify until she met Tim Hanni, the first American who earns the title Master of Wine – the most prestigious title in the wine world which has only been awarded to 380 people around the globe so far. Hanni introduced Lin to the vinotype concept — his 20-year research subject showing that everyone perceives wine differently and has his or her distinct preferences.

For Lin, that meant a $200 bottle of Bordeaux wasn’t necessary to give consumers a great experience every time they opened a bottle. Rather, they needed accessible, high-quality wines that matched their unique sensory experiences.

“When GREAT WINE, Inc. was founded, it was one of the few companies in the industry that successfully anticipated the changing tides of the global wine market,” says Lin, whose Stateside operations are based in Bellevue, Washington, United States. “It recognized that American and Asian consumers preferred affordable wines with traceable origins.”

To better pair shoppers with the right varietals, GREAT WINE, Inc., partnered with myVinotype, a wine recommendation platform developed based on big data analysis to learn about their wine “personalities.”

By asking a series of questions—whether users prefer salty or sweet foods, for example, or if they enjoy specific flavors, such as coffee or cilantro—the service suggests products it believes match individual tastes. Customers can take the quick survey right on the company website, leading them to their algorithm-selected product lists.

“This concept allows individuals to accurately build their wine profiles, be confident in their wine preferences, and be comfortable whenever they purchase wines,” adds Lin.

Going for Broke

While building a wine label around vinotypes appealed to Lin’s analytical side, she says the decision to launch the company was difficult.

“I was at the crossroads of either staying with a well-paid, full-time job in a large corporation or taking the risk of founding a start-up with no pay,” says Lin. “Choosing the latter meant spending my own savings to work on something that had no guarantee of success.”

She ultimately decided to follow her passion and to launch GREAT WINE, Inc., in 2015 as a company with roots in both the United States and China. For the first time, the former Microsoft employee was forced to operate without a major source of capital behind her, and one of the keys to success, she admits, was the willingness to accept her constraints.

“The production, labor, and facility costs of running a winery are very high,” she says. “For start-ups, it’s very easy to run into a situation where the bank balance is almost zero. Although I had big plans for my company, I had to accept there were times I simply couldn’t be a perfectionist.”

Two years later, she introduces her PERCIPIO label and opened a tasting room for GREAT WINE, Inc., in downtown Bellevue, Washington, United States. A second location in China just opened in February 2019.

The company launched at a precarious time for wine start-ups. After more than two decades of steadily increasing demand, wine consumption has all but plateaued over the past couple of years. GREAT WINE, Inc., sees its unique approach, which promises consumers more personalized experiences, as a way to overcome these barriers.

So far, Lin and her team have succeeded in that quest. The winemaker has already strung together a series of accolades, including the 2018 Bronze StevieⓇ Award for Start-up of the Year -- Consumer Services in The American Business Awards®.

“This award is a great encouragement for us to keep moving forward on our journey to alter the wine industry,” Lin says.

I’d consider adding chardonnay or another type of dry wine to precede ‘dry’ here, to be consistent with robust and sweet.

In fact, we deliberately avoid the concepts of varietals in our winemaking because we believe that wines can be tailored for different palates. Therefore, we suggest taking out all mentioning of varietals.

Thanks to growing charter school and homeschooling movements in the U.S., parents have more options than ever when it comes to their children’s education. Selecting the right school for one’s child ‒ and helping them succeed in that environment ‒ has become more of a process than it was in the past.

Stevie Award-winning Founder / Director of New Heights Educational Group, Pamela Clark, experienced this first-hand when she was deciding where to enroll her young children. Clark home-schooled her children before finding the right charter school for them.

At the local charter school, Clark took on leadership and mentoring roles. Despite her affinity for these independently-controlled schools, she noticed that certain students were falling behind. Those with learning and emotional difficulties, like autism and ADHD, had a particularly tough time getting through the curriculum.

What those students needed, she thought, was a place they could go for additional support. And so, in 2006, New Heights Educational Group was born.

Filling in the Educational Gaps

The organization became a single destination where families could get help deciding where to educate their children, improve their literacy skills and find a library of reading materials for dealing with challenges.

At its core, New Heights Educational Group is a one-on-one tutoring program that focuses in on areas where the student needs extra attention. Teachers and students are required to meet three hours a week over a three-day period.

“We found that fill-in-the-gap type tutoring is necessary in order to reach students that have been left behind in traditional settings,” Clark says.

This focused approach has yielded dramatic results, she notes. Several students who were on the verge of dropping out of high school before they received tutoring from NHEG have now graduated. One student who suffered from seizures at a young age was able to jump three grade levels in science and four grade levels in math in a little over a year.

Parents with children facing learning disabilities found an environment where they could explore new strategies and share their experiences with others.

“In addition to successful, child-focused learning techniques, families are able to cope with their children’s struggles better because of increased social support,” she says.

If anyone could empathize with someone struggling because of a lack of outside help, it was Clark. Neither her father nor her two brothers ever graduated from high school and her mom wasn’t always there to help with her studies. She had also faced numerous health ailments throughout her life, in large part from  being malnourished as a child.

Thanks to New Heights, she’s making sure other students don’t have to deal with those same hardships. The organization recently won the Silver Stevie in The American Business Awards for Organization of the Year in the Small Nonprofit or Government category, which was awarded during a June 20 gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York.

“This is such an honor,” Clark said afterward. “Every day our team of 81 volunteers work to promote our work in bettering education for all families, regardless of school choice, background or beliefs.”

Continuing to Grow

Eleven years after starting the venture, Clark continues to grow New Heights. It currently draws students from several states, thanks in part to its flourishing online solutions.

With help from Kathryn Stout, author of Natural Speller, the organization has created a free online version of the book for students learning to read and spell. Clark and her team also developed a free financial literacy course to help youths make wiser decisions with their money.

The journey into the digital realm has proven to be a fruitful one. New Heights garnered a second Silver Stevie this year in the New Product or Service of the Year category for its PK-12 Personalized Learning Solution.

In addition to helping students advance in school, Clark has also positioned the organization as a leading voice in educational strategies. On top of the monthly educational magazine it recently launched, New Heights started an Internet radio program that now boasts more than 24,000 listeners a year.

Clark and company published a book entitled One Nonprofit’s Journey to Success in 2015 and released a second, Unraveling Reading, late last year.

Even as she faces ongoing health issues, Clark continues to serve as the engine for the program. She oversees the dozens of volunteers who provide tutoring through New Heights, offers training to teachers and continually researches new strategies for helping students reach their potential.

“Educational changes are slow moving and very little improvements are ever made,” says Clark. “So the work that nonprofits do are very important and normally don't receive the attention they deserve.”

hargebacks911 won Gold and Silver Stevie Awards in The 2016 American Business Awards for Best Business-to-Business Product and New Product of the Year - Software Commerce Solution. 

The 2017 American Business Awards are accepting entries through April 7. Review the entry kit here. Learn more about New Product Awards.

We spoke with Gary Cardone, CEO of Chargebacks911 to learn more about the organization and what winning Stevie Awards has meant to their successes.

In a sentence or two, what does your organization do?

Chargebacks911 is dedicated to eliminating chargeback fraud (friendly fraud, family fraud, unauthorized claims and mis-coded disputes) for merchants, issuers, and acquirers. Last year, we safeguarded over 2.4 billion online transactions in 87 countries, working hand-in-hand with thousands of e-stores all over the world.  In a nutshell, we take the guess work out of chargebacks, which means reducing costs, enriching understanding, and recovering revenue. 

What is the vision behind your organization?

Our vision is simple: begin and end with a win-win scenario. When it comes to chargeback fraud, everyone is victimized: merchants pay fees and lose money to fake claims, banks devote expensive resources, and consumers end up paying higher prices and forfeiting friendly policies. 

We are passionate about identifying the true source of the problem and not just treating the symptoms.  Everything we do is backed by an ROI guarantee that is only possible due to our first-hand expertise and technology. Our vision has been built upon a mission to bring our understanding and workable results to enough merchants and banks that as an industry, we can overcome the growing chargeback problem. 

Ironically, this type of vision does not leave us without a business. Helping merchants achieve sustainability and growth is our primary goal, and understanding the best methods to use for managing chargebacks is a key component. There will always be disputes or issues to resolve between buyers and sellers. What is most relevant is the innovation undertaken to meet these growing requirements–a vision that keeps pace with evolving technology and consumer behavior...this is where we fit!

Is there a story or reasoning behind the nomination?

Our two company founders–Monica Eaton-Cardone and Gary Cardone–were jointly selling products online in 2010, when they were victims of chargeback fraud.

Chargeback fraud is an unjustified refund that’s forced upon merchants, occurring when a cardholder reports an unwarranted charge to their bank. The burden of proof is then on the merchant to defend the legitimacy of the sale, which is an extremely difficult threshold for online purchases, card-not-present transactions and shipped merchandise. Merchants lose $40 billion annually to chargebacks and the payments industry suffers even higher losses as a result.

Monica and Gary searched for a company to protect them from chargeback fraud, but to their astonishment, no such company existed. So, they studied chargebacks and became expert themselves, launching Chargebacks911 in 2011.

Roughly five years later, Chargebacks911 has 300+ global employees, thousands of clients, and corporate offices throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

How did your organization first become acquainted with the Stevies?

The Stevie Awards are internationally recognized as “The World’s Premier Business Awards,” because it’s not about politics, pay-for-play, or personal connections; it’s truly a merit-based honor that celebrates excellence in the field of business. We’ve admired the Stevie Awards for many, many years, and we’re deeply humbled to be included among such a distinguished list of trailblazing entrepreneurs, innovators and international trendsetters.

What was it like for your organization to win this award?

It validated what we believed all along: excellence deserves to be recognized, and if you “build a better mousetrap,” you’ll achieve success. It’s an honor that we share with our dedicated, passionate team-members, and they’re just as proud of this award as our cofounders are!

How has the win affected your business?

The eCommerce industry is extremely technical and very nuanced; even savvy, veteran online merchants often have difficulty understanding the latest developments in chargeback fraud, banking regulations and dispute resolution.  Capturing gold and silver Stevie Awards differentiates us from the competition, and offers an invaluable third-party testimonial to our clients. 

In short, it communicates something very special: We’re the best at what we do. 

What results have been gained since this award was won? Have any documents such as case studies been created that you can share with us?  

We just opened a new location in the UK so we can expand our service levels to better support our growing European customers. This addition comes on the heels of our increased focus on the travel industry. A case study, outlining how our services have impacted the travel industry, can be found here.

Please look out for exciting news–case studies and trends are due to be released Q2 2017.  With the changes from Visa and other payment providers taking hold this year, it is due to be an exciting one for industry news. We plan to release insider tips and regulatory updates shortly.

What changes in the industry does your team find interesting and why?

Perhaps “interesting” isn’t the right word, but it’s certainly noteworthy – cyber-fraud is growing by leaps and bounds:

• The chargeback issuance rate is growing by 20 percent each year
• There’s been a 300+ percent increase in fraud attacks on digital goods
• 94 percent of websites experienced a “bot” (nonhuman) cyber-attack last year
• 6 percent of an online merchants’ total annual revenue is now spent exclusively on fraud-prevention
• Chargeback fraud has grown by 41 percent and continues to climb each quarter

It’s an extraordinarily dangerous time for online merchants. It’s becoming as inevitable as death and taxes.

That’s why you NEED to be prepared.  And that’s why Chargebacks911 is here to help.

Is there an inspirational story related to your organization that might appeal to our blog readers?

Because of our rapid growth, Chargebacks911 has hired hundreds of new employees, largely from our hometown in Tampa Bay, Florida.  Sadly, we soon realized that many young people lack the confidence that is a prerequisite for success in such a fast-paced, hi-tech environment. This led our cofounder and Chief Operating Officer Monica Eaton-Cardone to launch a non-profit program called “Get Paid for Grades.” It offers a financial incentive to struggling high schoolers, focusing on improving literacy and mastering the life-skills that so important in today’s economy—thereby, improving self-confidence. 

Chargebacks911 is a sponsor of Get Paid for Grades, and the program recently expanded to four additional schools across Florida. We hope to eventually introduce the program nationally – because every child deserves an opportunity to succeed.