Today the Knoxville Chamber named finalists for the 2008 Pinnacle Business Awards presented by Regions Bank. The Awards gala is the business community’s marquee event and includes a celebration of business accomplishments and the honoring of the 2008 winners. The Pinnacle Business Awards event will be April 25th at the Knoxville Convention Center and will begin with a reception and silent auction at 6:30 p.m. The dinner and awards presentation will begin at 8:00 p.m.
More than 650 businesspeople are expected to attend the gala. Corporate tables and individual tickets are available and can be purchased online at www.knoxvillechamber.com or by contacting the Chamber at 865-637-4550.
Awards are presented in eight categories – six business and two individual categories. Finalists are named in four of those categories – Innovator Award, Small Business Excellence Award, Impact Award, and Minority Business Excellence Award. Winners will be announced in all categories at the Pinnacle Business Awards gala event.
Finalists and award categories are:
Innovator Award – presented by Image Matters, Inc.
This award is given to a business that has developed a new technology, innovative product or service or applied a business system or service in an innovative way.
Finalists:
Advanced Polymer Recycling Inc.
Molecular Pathology Laboratory Network, Inc.
Sunlight Direct, LLC
Small Business Excellence Award – presented by Bank of America
This award is presented to a business with 50 or fewer employees that has consistently grown its workforce and revenue and overcome obstacles including access to capital, operational efficiency, control of expenses, customer loyalty and distribution.
Finalists
AC Entertainment
Junk Bee Gone
Professional Drivers Medical Depots
Studio Four Design
Impact Award – presented by Sperry Van Ness R.M. Moore
This award honors a business that displays a commitment to making East Tennessee a better place to live and work through the development and support of a community project or program.
Finalists
Goody’s Family Clothing, Inc.
Knoxville Comprehensive Breast Center
Shoney’s of Knoxville, Inc.
Minority Business Excellence Award – presented by Covenant Health
This award is presented to a minority business that has produced outstanding business results and growth and overcome the obstacles of race or sex.
Finalists
ES&H, Inc.
GEM Technologies, Inc.
Visionary Solutions LLC
Business Excellence Awards – Mid-Sized Award presented by the Conference Center at Water’s Edge
This award is given to a company headquartered in East Tennessee or a company with a significant presence in East Tennessee that has shown remarkable profitability, growth and stability and is recognized regionally, nationally and/or internationally in their its respective business sector. Both a mid-sized and a large business are selected in this category.
Young Entrepreneur Award – presented by Cariten Healthcare
Presented to a young professional under forty that lives and works in East Tennessee and has achieved success while overcoming obstacles, to become one of tomorrow’s top business leaders. The winner will have started or is at risk in ownership of his/her business.
James A. Haslam, II Leadership Award – presented by Lexus of Knoxville
This award is given to a longtime business leader that exhibits strength in character, resolve and a commitment to the community and exemplary success in the regional business community.
The following is a release from the Knoxville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross, a Chamber member.
The Knoxville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross has been named one of the highest-performing chapters in the United States by the national American Red Cross, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
Only 90 out of 756 U.S. Red Cross chapters received the designation of being named a “high-performing chapter.”
“This outstanding achievement is the result of the hard work of our 19 employees and more than 1,900 volunteers, who consistently deliver the highest levels of service to those in need” said Allan Cox, chapter chairman. “All of us who are part of the Knoxville Area Chapter are extremely pleased to receive this award.”
Chapters were graded on a comprehensive set of 47 performance criteria as part of the Red Cross Chapter Performance Standards system. High scores in all areas of the evaluation are required to receive the honor. Among the performance standards in which the chapter excelled are:
- Achieving and maintaining proven disaster readiness and response capability to serve the community
- Training significant percentages of people in CPR, First Aid and other safety courses
- Ensuring strong efficiency in use of donated dollars, with emphasis on program expenditures
- Achieving high levels of customer satisfaction, as demonstrated through ongoing client surveys
In 2007, the 10-county region of the Knoxville Area Chapter provided relief to 247 families following local house and apartment fires, trained over 30,000 people in one or more lifesaving course, provided emergency communications for over 800 military personnel and their loved ones and did much more while spending some 88 cents of every dollar on programs and services.
In November 2005, Red Cross was selected as a “Best-Practice Partner” by the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC), for the Chapter Performance Standards system itself, which was formally recognized as a best practice for both non-profit and for-profit corporations. The APQC is a not-for-profit organization which has specialized in benchmarking and identifying business-related best practices for nearly 30 years.
Exedy America Corporation celebrated another expansion of its industrial facility located in the EastBridge Business Park in eastern Knox County on Friday, April 4.
Exedy is a manufacturer of torque converters and supplies its products to automobile manufacturers and the after market. The company’s latest expansion consists of the construction of an aluminum casting plant. The new facility required a $13 million investment and will see the creation of 40 new jobs.
Exedy first located in EastBridge in 1995. Since that time, Exedy has expanded the original plant twice investing well over $150 million. The company currently employs 570 people.
The University of Tennessee celebrated Thursday a grant that will bring one of the fastest supercomputers to East Tennessee, thereby increasing the Innovation Valley's competitiveness in the global information marketplace.
The $65 million grant from the National Science Foundation will be used to build and operate a computer capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or one petaflop.
The computer will be housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and was granted in large part due to the collaboration of the university, ORNL and other local agencies.
According to the University of Tennessee website, UT President John Petersen said, "This is a major national win that places the university in the upper echelon of supercomputing capability. It represents further affirmation of the tremendous capability of the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge partnership. It will have far-reaching positive impact on economic development for the entire state."
The building and operation of the supercomputer will attract at least 50 new jobs to the area, according to information from the University of Tennessee.
The supercomputer will be developed and delivered in stages, with the first stage to be completed this year, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel reports from the company building the computer.
Some likely operations for the computer will be in the fields of astrophysics (producing galaxy transformation simulations), climate science (predicting extreme weather and modeling climate change), and material science (developing new, useful materials).
University of Tennessee President John Petersen and James Haslam II, Chairman of Pilot Corp., are among the most influential Tennesseans, according to a Power100 list released by Business TN Magazine.
Other notable East Tennesseans who made the list include entertainer and entrepreneur Dolly Parton, Jim Clayton, founder of Clayton Homes; Jimmy Haslam, CEO of Pilot Corp.; Bill Sansom, Chairman and CEO of H.T. Hackney Co.; Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam; and Lady Vols basketball coach Pat Summitt.
While the list includes individuals from many different careers, including politicians, business leaders, entertainers and community icons, they all carry large influence and have deep ties to the local community.
Business TN remarks that this list is unique in that one half of the leaders on this list have remained there for all five years. However, 20 percent of the people on last years list did not return this year.
Note: This was sent from the University of Tennessee
Want to network with other HR students in your region, but not sure how? Are you looking for educational opportunities to advance your knowledge of human resources? Then look no further than the 2008 SHRM Southeast Regional Student Conference!
This stimulating student event is being held at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, April 18 and 19, 2008 and is free to all SHRM student members. That’s right- there is no fee to register for this conference.
The 2008 SHRM Southeast Regional Student Conference will include:
- Educational sessions from leaders in the HR field
- Opportunities for networking with other HR students as well as HR professionals
- Career guidance and mentoring opportunities
- HR Games academic competition
- And more!
Note: This release was sent from Sandler Training, a Knoxville Chamber member company.
For the seventh consecutive year, Sandler Training, (formerly Sandler Sales Institute) has been ranked No. 1 Training Program category by Entrepreneur’s 29th Annual Franchise 500 Issue for 2008.
Sandler Training is the leading provider of sales and management training and consulting programs for the past 40 years and has approximately 225 licensed franchises in the U.S. and internationally.
Competing companies are judged on the financial strength and stability, growth rate, and size of the system as well as number of years a company has been in business and the length of time it’s been franchising.
The largest Sandler Training center in East Tennessee is owned and operated by Steve Herzog of Herzog & Associates, Inc. Herzog has over 25 years of business sales and management experience and has been providing a full range of sales and management training programs, in Knoxville and surrounding areas for the past 12 years.
Herzog’s firm has helped thousands of professionals and companies learn more effective non-traditional sales and management strategies for their businesses by offering powerful and unique methods in his training.
More recently, Herzog has been recognized in the top ten percent of Sandler’s 225 franchises world wide. To learn more visit firstinsales.com.
The Knoxville business community has again been recognized by Forbes magazine in its 10th annual Best Places for Business and Careers list.
Knoxville comes in 10th, a drop in ranking from previous years, but still in an elite group of cities with a pro-business and pro-career environment.
Knoxville Chamber President and CEO Mike Edwards told the Knoxville News Sentinel, "Corporate America continues to look at indicators such as Forbes' rankings and they continue to see Knoxville listed. … These rankings drive interest in Knoxville and people give us a look that they may not have given us years ago."
Raleigh, NC; Boise, ID and Fort Collins, CO top the list. Nearby Atlanta, GA and Lexington, KY are also in the top 10. Nashville is ranked 15th.
Some of the indicators used to develop the rankings are number of colleges, cost of doing business, cost of living, crime rate, culture and leisure, educational attainment, income growth, job growth and net migration.
See the complete Forbes list of best cities to do business
Read the Knoxville News Sentinel story on the Forbes rankings..
This information comes from Fontana Village Resort, a Knoxville Chamber member business.
Fontana Village Resort is hosting a variety of family-friendly activities for Easter weekend, beginning on Friday and extending through Sunday.
On Friday, Fontana will host a flying disc festival, followed by a campfire and marshmallow roast. There will also be an arts and crafts opportunity.
On Saturday, there is a scheduled five-mile hike on the Appalachian Trail, which will go from Fontana Dam to Walker Gap. Easter egg coloring and a scavengar hunt are also scheduled for Saturday.
On Easter Sunday, there will be a buffet dinner.
For more information, please contact Fontana Village Resort at 800-849-2258 or go to fontanavillage.com.
EarthFest, an annual East Tennessee event to promote environmental awareness and reducing environmental footprints, is requesting donations for a silent auction.
The festival and auction will be held on April 26 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Pellissippi State Community College.
You can read the letter from EarthFest's auction coordinator, Will Ward, here.
Ward writes, "Participating businesses will be recognized on the EarthFest Web site, as well as in the auction tent, when you decide to donate. In addition, we would be happy to place any of your business cards and/or brochures beside your donations for attendees to pick-up as they browse."
For more information, visit www.knox-earthfest.org.
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