Over the last two years, I’ve taken on more of a leadership role at Worcester Business Journal outside of the newsroom, where I help decide on new products like events, edition focuses, and awards. This includes our nascent Notable Veteran Executive awards from November and the Dec. 1 edition’s Champions of Health Care awards, now in their third year.
Deciding whether to launch or keep an awards program includes a number of factors: the number of potential winners in the market, how many nominations WBJ can reasonably expect, financial support from sponsors and advertisers, anticipated event attendance, and – most of all – ensuring the award winners are unbiasedly selected in a way to uplift the best of the Central Massachusetts business community and maintain the integrity of the WBJ brand.
One factor I tend to overlook until late in the process is how much each of these awards mean to the individual award winners, which you can’t truly appreciate until you are physically in the room with them when they officially are recognized in front of their friends, family, co-workers, and the community at large. Most professionals toil in relative obscurity and achieve great things without most people knowing. Yet, when they are in a room full of hundreds of people all cheering for their achievements, you get to see this rare spark of humanity in them where all their hard work becomes a joyous culmination.
This has been especially true of the Champions of Health Care winners for the past two years. Health care is an extremely difficult profession, with life-or-death stakes complicated by factors beyond winners’ control, such as systematic barriers and insurance requirements. And all of our winners of this award for the past three years represent the best of what people can be: giving all of their talents, time, expertise, and beyond to make other people’s lives better.
In these stories, you’ll discover a group of high achievers dedicated to reaching the best-possible outcomes for everybody.
Brad Kane is editor of the Worcester Business Journal.
