Let the Awards Begin

It’s fall, which around WILMA means awards season.

We’ve been hard at work on this year’s Women to Watch Awards program – from the (difficult) process of judging to the (fun) job of notifying winners to the (all-hands-on-deck) effort of highlighting the latest group of finalists.

For the fifteenth year, we are spotlighting thirty-five accomplished women in the region working in seven vastly different fields. We’re also highlighting this year’s Icon Award recipient, Wilma Daniels.

Several years ago, I saw Daniels walking around WILMA Expo event with a copy of the latest issue and joking that it was her magazine.

On September 11, when we gather at the Wilmington Convention Center for this year’s awards event, it will in fact, be her issue with the WILMA masthead declaring Wilma an icon.

It takes a team and a lot of hours to pull together the honors.

In this issue alone, our editorial art director Suzi Drake worked with photographer Madeline Gray on the Herculean effort to capture amazing portraits of all thirty-five finalists and Daniels in a very short timeframe.

It’s an effort that’s organized by our events team, director Jamie Merrill and Alec Hall, who also serves as WILMA Leadership’s assistant director, to bring everyone together.

And it starts with the outside panel of judges who wade through the hundreds of awards nominations to decide the finalists and category winners – making tough judgement calls throughout the process.

But it also wouldn’t be possible without the finalists themselves. Without the impacts they’re making in their fields and in the community, there would be nothing to celebrate.

Read more about those achievements here. Discover what’s made Wilma Daniels committed to the area here. And get a sneak peek at who is designing this year’s custom Women to Watch winners bracelet here.

Congrats to this year’s finalists, and stay tuned for announcements in September of the winners.

Vicky Janowski
WILMA Editor
editor@wilmingtonbiz.com

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