More than 400 female entrepreneurs, executives, and employees will gather at New York's Marriott Marquis Hotel this Friday evening, November 10 for the presentation of the 20th annual Stevie® Awards for Women in Business, widely recognized as the world's top honors for the achievements of women in the workplace.

Finalists in the 2023 competition were announced in September.  The Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements among the Finalists will be revealed at Friday's event.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are among eight Stevie Awards programs.  The others are The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.  A ninth program, the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, will debut in 2024.  Learn about all of the Stevie Awards programs at www.StevieAwards.com.  

Entries for next year's Stevie Awards for Women in Business will open in May.  Get the entry kit.

Here is the list of organizations that will be represented at Friday's event (as of November 6):

4D Vision Gym, Cromwell, CT USA
Abu Dhabi Sport Council, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Al Ghurair Investment, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Alteryx, Inc., Irvine, CA USA
Amazon Web Services, Arlington, VA USA
Ashley Deland, Burlington, ON Canada
Aspire, Phoenix, AZ USA
Autodesk, Inc., Portland, OR USA
Avetta, Lehi, UT and Houston, TX USA
BEYOND HC LLC, Sanford, FL USA
Big Deal Media, Barrington, IL USA
Biohaven, New Haven, CT USA
Blue Beyond Consulting, Castro Valley, CA USA
Blue Diamond Property Group, Sydney, NSW Australia
BODEN Agency, Miami, FL USA
BookSmarts Accounting & Bookkeeping, Kaysville, UT USA
Buy From A Black Woman, Atlanta, GA USA
C. Light Technologies, Boston, MA USA
Cherishers 811 CIC, Rugeley, Staffs United Kingdom 
Cigniti Technologies, Irving, TX USA
Cloud Studio (YouMe Lin LLC), New York, NY USA
Co Conspirators Agency, Kirkland, WA USA
Coast Professional, Inc., West Monroe, LA USA
Cognizant Technology Solutions, Teaneck, NJ USA
Cognizant, Los Angeles, CA USA
Creativ Vision Coaching, Bentleigh East, VIC Australia
CrossCountry Consulting, McLean, VA USA
DHL Global Forwarding, Freight, Bonn, Germany
Diageo, London, United Kingdom
Docs Outside the Box, St. Petersburg, FL USA
doTERRA International, Pleasant Grove, UT USA
DrivenIQ, Towson, MD USA
E29 Marketing, Larkspur, CA USA
EdHeroes Network, Triesen, Liechtenstein
EHR Concepts, Statesvilles, NC USA
Einstein Solutions, LLC, Covington, WA USA
Elevance Health, Atlanta, GA USA
Enterprising Women Magazine, Cary, NC USA
Equifax, Atlanta, GA USA
Everise, Planation, FL USA
Experience Management Institute, Delaware, OH USA
EY, Dallas, TX USA
Fairina Cheng Jewellery, Sydney, NSW Australia
Far Niente Wine Estates, Oakville, CA USA
FiveSeven Consulting Pty Ltd, Newcastle, NSW Australia
Friends Services Alliance, Blue Bell, PA USA
FunkkOFF! Inc., Dana Point, CA USA
GAF Energy, Parsippany, NJ USA
GEHA (Government Employees Health Association, Inc.), Lee's Summit, MO USA
Gratitude in Action, Billings MT USA
Green Hope Foundation, Toronto, ON Canada
Havas Health & You, New York, NY USA
Hilton Supply Management, McLean, VA USA
Honeylight Enterprises Pty Ltd T/A Greenville Development, Melbourne, VIC Australia
How Many Elephants, Alresford, Hampshire United Kingdom
HSBC, Woking, Surrey United Kingdom
Hygiea Health & Wellness, LLC, Greenfield, NH USA
IBM Manufacturing Solutions Pte Ltd, Singapore
IBM, Armonk, NY USA
IBM, Guadalajara, Mexico
IDEA Health & Fitness Association, San Diego, CA USA
iFOLIO, Atlanta, GA USA
Innovation Central Brisbane I Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD Australia
INVNT, New York, NY USA
iTalent Digital, San Jose, CA USA
J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, San Jose, CA USA
JK Premier Marketing, Fayetteville, NC USA
John Alexander Consulting, New York, NY USA
Jones Publishing (Citywealth), London, United Kingdom
Karrikins Group, Lakewood, CO USA
Knopman Marks Financial, New York, NY USA
Mary Finch, Chicago, IL USA
MDI Novare, Taguig, Metro Manila Philippines
Media Cause, San Francisco, CA USA
Media Culture, Dallas-Fort Worth, TX USA
Michael Page International, New York, NY USA
MORE Latinoamerica, Wasilla, AK USA
Naish Partners, Santa Barbara, CA USA
Nancy Twine, Miami Beach, FL USA
Nativo, El Segundo, CA USA
Network for Victim Recovery of DC, Washington, DC USA
Nexxen, New York, NY USA
Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, Washington, DC USA
Ocean Rescue Alliance International, Apollo Beach, FL USA
Ohanna Global, Sheridan, WY USA and Qatar/United Arab Emirates
Ordway Conservatory of Classical Ballet, Manassas, VA USA
Origen Air Systems Ltd., Victoria, BC Canada
Ossa, Tenafly, NJ USA
Pearl Interactive Network, Inc., Columbus, OH USA
Perituza Software Solutions, League City, TX USA
Pittsburgh International Airport, Pittsburgh, PA USA
PlanSource, Orlando, FL USA
PlayWise Partners, Los Angeles, CA USA
Pony Pals, Westford, MA USA
Proforma, Independence, OH USA
Purpol Marketing Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire United Kingdom
RedefinED Advisors LLC, Altoona, PA USA
Relevance International, New York, NY USA
ResultsCX, Fort Lauderdale, FL USA
Reverba, Seattle, WA USA
RNDC, Atlanta, GA USA
Room 17 Productions, Lexington, KY USA
Salesforce, San Francisco, CA USA
SAP SE, Walldorf, Germany
Savvas Learning Company, Paramus, NJ USA
Schneider Electric, Foxboro, MA USA
Shawarma Press Franchising, Irving, TX USA
SLB, Houston, TX USA
Sleepm Global, Inc., Markham, ON Canada
Spaulding Ridge, Chicago, IL USA
Stacey Ashley, Sydney, NSW Australia
Stress Free Super Mum, Gisborne, VIC Australia
SUN HOPE Co., Ltd., Chosei-gun, Chiba Japan
Team b. Strategy +, Tacoma, WA USA
Teladoc Health, Purchase, NY USA
TELUS, Vancouver, BC Canada
Terra Nova Medical, Richmond, BC Canada
The Alpha Enterprise, Cabuyao, Laguna Philippines
The Audacious Agency, Sunshine Coast, QLD Australia
The Executive Roundtable, Toronto, ON Canada
The Flute Academy, Sydney, NSW Australia
The Mach 1 Group, Austin, TX USA
The Social Element, New York, NY USA
The Stardust Food Company, Bethesda, MD USA
The Sway Effect, New York, NY USA
The Washington Post, Washington, DC USA
The Whitney Reynolds Show, Chicago, IL USA
Tiyya Foundation, Tustin, CA USA
TONE Networks, Oyster Bay, NY USA
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Lake Forest, CA USA
Transact Campus, Scottsdale, AZ USA
Trust Relations, Williams, AZ USA
Valasys Media LLC, Jersey City, NJ USA
VeriSIM Life, San Francisco, CA USA
ViewLift, New York, NY USA
Vmware, Palo Alto, CA USA
WDS Marketing & Public Relations, Overland Park, KS USA
We Rock DM, Austin, TX USA
Women Talk Tech, Barrie, Ontario, Canada
Women's Biz Global, Sydney, NSW Australia
WorkJam, Montreal, QC Canada
ZLH Enterprises, Manalapan, NJ USA 

It’s essential in today’s world to try to be part of something bigger than yourself, and this applies not only to individuals but to institutions. If your specialty is helping clients solve financial issues, for example, then you are particularly well placed to help out by problem-solving in the wider community.

Many big companies have organized programs that encourage their employees to consider volunteering, and they facilitate these acts of service by giving their employees time to do so. Businesses find this experience of giving back continues outside of work hours as well, which creates an ongoing, committed relationship with the given charity or nonprofit. The relationship of the company to the community at large then often becomes an integral part of the corporate culture.

Volunteering Helps Company Culture

Some businesses tend start their volunteer work on a small scale. For example, some companies employ industry education, which helps other professionals excel in their respective fields. This sense of social responsibility often fosters a desire to do even more, which can lead staff members to give their time regularly to local charities.

Stevie-winner Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, which is based in Houston, Texas, United States, is one business that describes their experience of volunteering as enlightening and something that has given them fulfillment and made their company feel like a real family with a shared purpose.

A Perfect Match

The Lighthouse, a charity that is a member of the United Way of Greater Houston, Texas, United States, helps over seven thousand blind and partially sighted people every year by giving members the tools they need to live independently. When Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions was looking for a place to volunteer, they came across this local charity, and it seemed like a perfect match. Both were looking for a long-term, meaningful relationship, and that has undoubtedly come to fruition.

Since 1939 the Lighthouse has provided social activities for the blind and visually impaired in the Houston, Texas, United States, area, and they love to welcome volunteers. By providing several volunteers to assist with craft sessions and reading activities during the working day, Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions proves an excellent fit with the Lighthouse. The partnership ensures the charity can provide sessions in the daytime, which is when their clients need them most.

Giving Back to the Community

Meeting new people and getting a unique perspective into the local community through the staff, volunteers, and service users at the Lighthouse is just one example of how Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions is committed to supporting its staff members’ communities. The work doesn’t stop with the Lighthouse, though. Employees have also volunteered at a wide range of other nonprofit organizations, such as Children of Military Members in Tampa, Florida, United States; the Nevada Children’s Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; and the Tulane Health System in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

Raja Sengupta, executive vice-president and general manager at Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions, is proud of how his team embraces the volunteering mind-set.

“The employees are keen to deepen their relationships with the communities in which they live and to take part in projects where they can get to know and help others,” says Sengupta.

This can-do attitude earned Wolters Kluwer Lien Solutions several Stevie Awards in 2019. For its iLien Motor Vehicle solution, the company earned a Silver Stevie®️ Award in the Financial Services category, as well as a Gold Stevie Award in the Legal Information Solution category at the American Business Awards®️.

Wolters Kluwer received three Silver Stevies for Female Executive of the Year - Business Services - More Than 2,500 Employees on behalf of Jennifer Cronin, VP of Customer Service; Female Executive of the Year - Business Services - 11 to 2,500 Employees on behalf of Alyza Tarmohamed, General Manager; and Most Innovative Woman of the Year - Technology on behalf of Karen Abramson, CEO at the 2019 Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

Interested in winning a Stevie Award in 2020?

Much has been written about the rise of the gig economy, i.e., the hiring of workers on short-notice, short-duration contracts or freelance jobs. Part of this narrative is how noticeably different it is from the labor market models of old. In the past, people either focused on: a) the miraculous rise of start-ups based entirely on gig economy business models, such as Uber, or b) how the gig economy is, for workers, often characterized by a lack of job security, pension, health care contributions, and other employment benefits once considered standard.

Either view misses the wider picture, though.

To start, job security and benefits were never as widespread or culturally ingrained in the United States as they were in Europe. And even there, they applied only to the working population, which in the most unionized industries was predominantly, if not exclusively, male.

Not only have workforce demographics since changed, but many of the industries in question began to decline or even to die out long before the rise of the gig economy. The perks afforded to the workers declined along with them. In the United States, a blue-collar job that included both health care and pension benefits was a rare thing, even in the last few years leading up to the financial crisis.

Furthermore, the gig economy, particularly when it involves jobs conducted entirely online, has enabled competition among a wider variety of qualified service providers in a huge range of sectors.

Increased competition holds especially true for international organizations, who can now easily hire, for example, translators or legal experts to process documents. These workers can be local to the company, or they can be specialized experts halfway across the world. It simply depends on the priorities and needs of the business – but an over-looked benefit of the gig economy is its lack of dependence on a shared geography.

It might surprise you then that the gig economy also benefits domestic labor market access – particularly professional women.

Online-only work relationships inherently favor white-collar work. That’s because in the gig economy, work that involves the processing and editing of data or documents is easier. These projects can be worked on and transferred between people, even those who have never met face to face.

As a result, gig economy work favors workers with at least secondary, preferably tertiary, levels of education who can self-organize, hold themselves accountable, and who are dedicated to advancing their skills.

In fact, such online professional work largely benefits women who have historically been excluded from the workforce, both in Western countries and in the developing world. There are at least two reasons for this:

1. Women still make up the majority of stay-at-home parents in developed countries;
2. Women also account for the majority of college-level qualifications achieved in developed countries and in developing countries with reputable education systems. This trend is seen even in countries where there is no expectation of women becoming a significant part of the workforce, such as Iran or Saudi Arabia.

By working online, women who have desirable qualifications but are constrained by social or family circumstances can find gainful employment with clients who require their expertise.

Their clients might not be looking for full-time employees who receive full benefits, but neither are these workers looking for the additional constraints of regular hours and physical attendance.

Instead, a working relationship can be formed around necessities and priorities, with both parties still inherently interested in a long-term working relationship on a good-pay-for-good-work basis.

Alysha Dominico and Vicky Marrack, co-founders of the inbound marketing agency Tangible Words, explain that they discovered the virtues of a long-term but flexible working relationship thanks to their first external copywriter. Her family responsibilities necessitated she stay at home, but allowed for remote work, and this win-win relationship became the blueprint for nine more subcontractors, most of them women. This model has even gained the company independent acclaim. Tangible Words was awarded a 2018 Gold Stevie® Award in the category of Achievement in Promoting Work-Life Balance for Women in Business.

“We feel good about being an office that offers flexibility and skills development to keep parents sharp for whatever kind of lives they want to lead—now or later,” said Marrack.

“The people we employ might not otherwise have access to the labor market. Our distributed office model, virtual work, and flexible work schedules are great for them and us. Creating a positive work culture focused on our staff leading healthy lives that balanced work and life priorities equally was always mission-critical to the success of Tangible Words,” said Dominico.

“We stumbled into the work limitations – yet incredible experience and expertise parents have at that stage of life. So we decided to empower parents. Helping them create the life they choose has become a real source of pride.”

Dominico points out that it’s also a strategy other companies will need to utilize  - particularly when employee availability is low. A 2017 briefing by McKinsey Global Institute called “Technology, Jobs, and the Future of Work” documented that “Almost 75 million youth are officially unemployed. Women represent one of the largest pools of untapped labour: globally, 655 million fewer women are economically active than men.”

“You read this and compare it with other things you see, like research from RBC which urges people to start to talk about the future prediction that 2.4 million jobs will be added to the Canadian economy by 2021, and you wonder how long we can afford to not focus on prioritizing youth and women.”

Indeed RBC’s research team published in their 2018 report “Humans Wanted: How Canadian youth can thrive in the age of disruption” that  “Despite projected heavy job displacement in many sectors and occupations, the Canadian economy is expected to add 2.4 million jobs over the next four years, all of which will require this new mix of skills...…an increasing demand for foundational skills such as critical thinking, co-ordination, social perceptiveness, active listening and complex problem solving.”