HBA Proudly Announces the 2021 Global Committee Award Winners
The HBA is proud to announce our 2021 Global Committee Award winners for their outstanding achievements across the association.
The LEAD Award
2021 Award Winner: Melanie Cooke, Global Committee Chair, Women in Science Affinity Group
The Leadership, Excellence and Dedication (LEAD) award is the highest honor an HBA volunteer can be given within their community. The LEAD award honors a volunteer who has made a significant contribution while demonstrating excellence with a positive impact during the 2021 calendar year.
The HBA Women in Science group was the pioneering affinity group for the HBA and with Melanie as the Global Committee Chair, she has shown herself to be a truly committed and dedicated champion for women in science, demonstrating her personal and professional passion around helping women science leaders to progress in their careers.
The Legacy Award
2021 Award Winners: Kari Gearhart and Stefania Migliuolo
The Legacy award is presented to an HBA volunteer who has consistently demonstrated outstanding service and long-term contributions to HBA over five years. The recipient has been involved as a leader of multiple committee(s)/projects during the course of their volunteering.
Kari Gearhart, HBA Global Committee Advisor and Content, Fit to Lead Affinity Group
Kari has been an active member of the HBA for more than a decade. During her time she has served in many areas where she led the strategic planning and implementation of multiple programs and initiatives. She pioneered the Fit to Lead six-month triathlon leadership program by developing content material, partnering with vendors, health coaches, yoga masters, swim coaches, and running instructors to grow the program to a global level.
Kari served as the HBA Global Committee Chair for the Fit to Lead affinity for two years and currently sits on the Fit to Lead board as an advisor and content designer for the newly created signature program, “Spring into Leadership - a six month Fit to Lead Journey”. Kari is a premium athlete, an amazing coach and motivator, and always ready to make a difference.
Stefania Migliuolo, HBA Global Committee Chair, Marketing and Communications
Stefania has been a true leader for the HBA since 2013. She continues to be a key contributor to the overall marketing and communication of the organization and has shared her talents at different levels including chapter, regional and global. She is collaborative and brings ideas to increase awareness of the HBA Global Committee Council, is always a professional and collaborative leader with the regions and with the HBA staff to align on marketing and communications. Her support for the Digital Innovators group has really enhanced communication efforts.
Stefania’s ideas are visionary, i.e Press Corps and recently in collaboration with member experience to create short videos which show how to navigate the HBA website.
The Marie Curie Award
2021 Award Winners: Lillian Cao and Karima Sharif
The Marie Curie award recognizes an innovation (a program, project, process, solution, or strategy) that has had a significant impact. The recipient/s have followed through on this innovation from concept to implementation and have had a clear and measurable impact on the HBA overall.
Lillian Cao, HBA Global Committee Deputy Chair, Women in Healthcare (WIH) Give Back Affinity Group
Lillian was one of the early leaders who got excited about the potential of the WIH Give Back affinity group stepping into whatever task was needed to help make the group successful. In 2021, Lillian took on a marketing and communication role for the team to drive awareness of the group as well as the signature program "Leaders Building Bridges to Health“.
She created marketing collateral for social media, developed event marketing plans, built relationships with each region's marketing leaders, and encouraged all to get more involved. Of particular note, she created the first-ever MarComm dashboard, leveraging data on views, comments, and posts to show the impact of the HBA and the WIH Give Back affinity group. Her dashboard generated important metrics on the impact of the work which helped build further momentum.
Karima Sharif, HBA Global Committee Chair, Women of Color (WoC) Affinity Group
The Women of Color affinity group was launched during the 2019 HBA Annual Conference to address a need for a focus on diversity and equity within organizations. As 2020 brought the pandemic, it also brought the visibility of racial injustice in society and the workplace and the importance and need of this group.
Under Karima's strong leadership and encouragement, several women of color leaders have advanced in their professional careers by taking on new assignments at their companies thru promotion opportunities. Through Karima's example, these leaders stepped up to serve as key volunteer leaders across the association including serving on the team that developed the inaugural Women of Color Wellness Summit that kicked off the 2021 HBA Annual Conference. She also was the visionary behind the HBA's first celebration of Juneteenth. Her influence has truly made a difference.
The Everest Award
2021 Award Winner: Colleen Burns, HBA Global Committee Chair, Mentoring
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he Everest award honors a significant accomplishment that went above and beyond the call of duty or was considered previously impossible. The recipient has shown a willingness to go the extra mile to improve the HBA and extended themselves to help others with a high degree of excellence, professionalism, positivity, and integrity in their work.
Colleen Burns overcame a significant challenge in 2021 due to the pandemic to ensure the HBA mentoring program was executed properly as the program pivoted to fully virtual. Colleen always manages to give time and commitment (which is a lot) to the HBA Mentoring Program while managing a demanding day job. The HBA Mentoring Program is the most cited program of value for the HBA and Colleen along with her strong team continues to work across all the regions to strengthen the program to a more global program.
The Spark Award
2021 Award Winner: Audra Ortiz (Walsh), Marketing and Communications Director, Tomorrow’s Executives Affinity Group
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he Spark award is a peer-to-peer recognition program which honors any HBA volunteer who has distinguished themselves through “little bursts of awesomeness” in areas such as attitude, collaboration, pitching in, consistency, leadership and building community by supporting others.
Audra is the best collaborator anyone could wish for. She produced a video for the Tomorrow’s Executives affinity group and she was not hesitant at all when asked if she would help in producing a video to understand the Global Committee Council. Providing guidance on what would be needed and then spending time to stitch different clips together, her dedication to producing the best product possible was also demonstrated when she added images which added significantly to the visual aesthetic of the final video.
The Honored Volunteer Award
2021 Award Winners: Amy Hewitt and Denise Sena
The Honored Volunteer award rewards an HBA volunteer who has demonstrated outstanding service. Typically offered on a monthly or quarterly basis, this award recognizes volunteers who show a strong commitment to the HBA, make an outstanding volunteer contribution, and have high energy and a positive attitude.
Amy Hewitt, HBA Global Committee Deputy Chair, Corporate Relations
Amy has offered her insights and strategy to the corporate partner engagement optimization but then really stepped forward to lead the team while the chair was unable to serve. Her contributions, efforts and insights have been outstanding. She has gone above and beyond on our CP engagement optimization project; leading the team, collating and summarizing findings, and really helping to push the project along and over the finish line.
You can count on Amy to always deliver her highest quality work with excellent insights and considerations. She is a fantastic demonstration of what can get done when you have the right attitude, approach, and enthusiasm.
Denise Sena, HBA Global Committee Chair, Fit to Lead Affinity Group
Denise is an amazing leader with a true commitment to the HBA. Her ability to move the needle in whatever she has volunteered for is legendary, including previously being a key figure in organizing the HBA Woman of the Year event. When it became clear that the pandemic would not allow for the vision that she had in place for regional key events, Denise was not deterred and volunteered to lead the Fit to Lead affinity group. A proactive member of the HBA Global Council Denise has brought ideas and issues to the table which have been relevant for other AGs at meetings. In particular, she has sought to bring transparency to the regional vs the global roles for Fit to Lead.
She leads by example and is always collaborative, seeking to align with the interests of others for the best outcome for the HBA. Her work to create a national event speaks volumes to the legacy that she develops within the groups that she leads and a tireless enthusiasm to promote the vision of the HBA.