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Award Recipients
Presenting Awards 2008 Honorees
This year's honorees are stopping traffic with their passion for the arts, sharing their expertise and resources and achieving big results that will truly inspire you. Find out how they tapped into their own creativity and achieved business success while collaborating with the arts.
Avatar Award for Artistic Excellence
Lisa Scottoline, Bestselling Author and Columnist
Presented by:
Lisa Scottoline's distinguished career as a writer has put Philadelphia on the map in each of her 15 best-selling novels. Her legal thrillers have entertained readers with page-turning action and her trademark wit and humor.
She writes a weekly column for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and has won many awards, including the Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. She teaches Justice and Fiction at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and appears in Court TV's new crime series, "Murder By The Book." Her books are published in more than 20 languages, and she is a lifelong resident of the Philadelphia area.
Bringing creativity and passion to her work, Lisa continuously demonstrates a strong commitment to her hometown of Philadelphia and an overwhelming enthusiasm for writing.
Business/Arts Partnership Awards
The Business/Arts Partnership Awards recognize a successful partnerships between business and an arts or cultural organization. Awards are presented in two categories:
Dranoff Properties with Philadelphia Theatre Company
Business & Arts Partnership Award: Mid to Large Size Business with an Arts and Cultural Organization
Presented by: KPMG LLP
As a result of an RFP from the City of Philadelphia to develop the property on the Avenue of the Arts on west side of Broad Street, Philadelphia Theatre Company and Dranoff properties began a collaboration to fulfill the requirements of the City that the project developed would combine new residential and commercial space with an arts component. Its successful completion and opening involved a groundbreaking combination of commercial investment, government support, and the efforts of a not-for profit arts organization, that has been hailed as a model of collaboration for civic revitalization projects.
Sneaker Villa with Art-Reach
Business/Arts Partnership Award: Small Business with an Arts and Cultural Organization
Presented by:
Art-Reach and Sneaker Villa collaborated on a unique community-based, socially-conscious arts project in North Philadelphia. The project brought together a group of students from William Penn High School and gave them an opportunity to create a positive response to the violence that plagues our city. Over the course of 12 weeks, the students learned how to create original designs with an anti-violence theme and silk-screen them onto T-shirts. All of the finished designs were reviewed by a panel of experts in violence prevention, youth entrepreneurship, and fashion design and retailing. The winning design (“Turn Your Brain On…And Violence Off”) was mass-produced and sold at Sneaker Villa on North Broad Street, with proceeds benefiting the school.
G. Fred DiBona, Jr. Individual Leadership Award
The G. Fred DiBona, Jr. Individual Leadership Award recognizes an individual, business or civic leader who has greatly contributed to one or more arts or cultural organizations in the region, exhibited dedication above and beyond their professional responsibilities and made a measurable impact on the region's cultural landscape.
Diane Dalto Woosnam, Chair, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
Presented by:
Diane is best known for her exemplary work as the First Deputy City Representative for Arts & Culture under the leadership of Mayor Ed Rendell from 1992 to 2000, where she represented the interests of the arts and cultural community to the City administration and to the Avenue of the Arts development project. Diane has maintained a leadership role in the region through her appointment as the chair of the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts. Diane is on the boards of the Annenberg Center, Arden Theatre, Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia Art Alliance and on advisory committees of Philagraphika, PAFA, Asociacion de Musicos Latino Americanos and the Asian Arts Initiative. She has continued to be an outspoken spokesperson for the arts in the Greater Philadelphia Region.
Business Volunteer Awards
The awards for Arts & Business Council Volunteers of the Year recognize outstanding contributions of active business volunteers in four Council programs:
Business On Call Volunteer of the Year Award
Glynis L. Joynes, Sales & Service Specialist, PNC Bank
Presented by:
As Company Captain, Ms. Joynes acts as a liaison to the Arts & Business Council at PNC Bank, answering questions, providing information and helping to recruit and retain Business On Call volunteers at PNC Bank. In cases such as the Arden Theatre Company and the Philadelphia Zoo, Ms. Joynes repeatedly volunteers year after year and/or multiple times for organizations. She is also quick to organize company coverage of a specific event, such as the Japan America Society's Japanese Culture Week at Liberty Place. Ms. Joynes has participated over the long term, having been involved with Business On Call since 1999. Over and over again, PNC Bank has either the highest or one of the highest number of Business On Call volunteers active in the program. This is in part to Ms. Joynes' pivotal role in engaging and encouraging PNC employees to take part in Business On Call.
Business On Board Member of the Year Award
Edward M. Mayer, Esquire, Principal and Owner, Mayer & Associates Intellectual Capitalists
Presented by:
Ed was elected to the Board of Directors of The Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial in 2006. He began his tenure with a technology focus and was tapped to head the Development and Marketing committee beginning Fall 2007 because of the enthusiasm he brought to this area. He stepped into a committee role that had not had strong leadership previously and brought inspiration and energy and to the committee.
BVA Volunteer of the Year Award
Heather M. Newcomb, Vice President, Strategic Communications, Sage Communications Partners
Presented by:
Heather began her project with Astral Artistic Services in September 2005 and completed it in October 2007. The goal of the project was to guide Astral in conducting market research, developing a positioning statement that takes into account Astral's menu of programs and varied constituents and build a Marketing Communications Plan around the new positioning statement. Heather was instrumental in helping the organization re-imagine its identity and create plans to strategically promote its programs and services.
Technology Connectors Volunteer of the Year Award
Jeffrey D. Green, Owner, Savant Technology Consulting
Presented by:
Jeff worked with multiple arts organizations including the Arts and Spirituality Center, Philadelphia Singers, Cheltenham Arts Center Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival, Philadelphia Sketch Club, Moonstone Inc. and The Village of Arts and Humanities. With each organization, Jeff produced detailed reports on their current states of technology, worked with key staff and their strategic plans to lay out a clear set of recommendations for replacement and new equipment along with possible staff training. Jeff works with the organizations to determine not only what the organization thinks is the problem but takes the extra step to uncover the “core problems”.
PVLA Volunteer of the Year Award
Michael E. Costa III, Esquire and Steven D. Kim, Esquire, Ballard Spahr Andrews and Ingersoll, LLP
Presented by:
The team at Ballard was instrumental in helping Independent Filmmaker, Ben Herold on a “First Person Documentary Project” with intellectual property issues including development of composer licenses and work-for-hire agreements and negotiation of music clearances.