Over the past couple of years, we have been able to share our awards and recognition that we’ve earned for our growth. We are very excited to be able to continue to share news like this as we were recently named one of the 50 Fastest Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies by Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO). We are especially proud of this award, to be a women-owned business, and to promote diversity in our leadership team.
Honored to be Awarded by Women Presidents’ Organization
We ranked the 35th Fastest Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies in America. An awards ceremony and luncheon was held by the Women Presidents’ Organization earlier this month in Los Angeles. Client conflicts resulted in us being unable to attend the event in person, however our team celebrated together here in Boston!
The award is particularly special to our very own CEO Heather Morris Kyer, Co-Founder of Hawkins Point Partners. Heather teamed up with Steve Mersky and John Cornwall five years ago to start Hawkins Point. Her entrepreneurship as well as her example of commitment to her clients and her community have had a direct impact on our company’s reputation and growth. We are excited to see the recognition of that growth through this award.
Steve shared his excitement about the WPO award. “We are proud of our achievements and are motivated to continue to grow. It validates our approach and reminds us of the need to innovate and evolve as a firm.”
What It Means to Be Women Led and Women Owned
To be considered for this award, businesses are required to be privately held, woman-owned/led companies, and have reached annual revenues of at least $500,000 as of January 1, 2013. They were then ranked according to a sales growth formula, which combined percentage and absolute growth from the past year. You can see all 50 companies and their ranking here.
Why is it so important to us to share this award with you more than our previous awards? One reason is a sad one. Diversity in leadership teams, especially in the C-suite, is still not common in business today. A recent CNNMoney analysis showed only 5% of the CEO jobs in the S&P 500 are held by women. The trajectory for increase in this percentage is bleak.
Racial and ethnic diversity in the C-suite is not much better. According to a report from Fortune 500 last year, 73% of Senior Executives are white. Thankfully, diversity is officially a characteristic of consideration for board composition as of 2016. Leaders are speaking up for other leaders from minority groups. We can celebrate these efforts. But there’s still a lot of work to do.
You’ve probably heard mention of the Times Up movement. Hollywood glamorized this campaign this year and a large focus has been on workplace abuse and harassment. And rightly so. But it has also shed light on gender disparity in companies’ leadership.
The Times Up movement is a young one. Women Presidents’ Organization, however, has been empowering women business leaders for over 20 years. Another reason this award is so important to us is because we are appreciative to the organization for what they do. We are proud to be associated. We also hope the award can be an encouragement to other individuals and our women-owned business partners.
