Voting continues for ‘Full Steam Ahead’ awards; don’t miss your chance

WRALTechWire will host its second “Full Steam Ahead Awards” celebration on Oct. 24 at the Full Steam Brewery in Durham. Ten individual leaders and five companies will be honored at the free event. We also will be recognizing several life-time achievement winners. Save the date!

Only WRALTechWire subscribers can vote.

Voting is now open online.

However, anyone can attend the party. And it’s free. But you need to register online.

From its launch 11 years ago, WRALTechWire has been focused on the energy of high-tech and life science entrepreneurship, innovation. We’re taking that commitment a step further again this year with these awards which are designed to honor the individuals and companies that are so crucial to North Carolina’s future.

The categories for the awards:

Best of the Best

Ten individual winners will be named, all playing off the express train to success theme.

The categories:

• Mogul – Top investor/owner

• Conductor – Board chairman

• Engineer – CEO

• Fireman – COO (operations)

• Brakeman – CFO (spending)

• Signalman – CIO/CTO (technology/information/science officer/chief medical officer)

• Rookie – Top entrepreneur

• Steward – Mentor/advisor to startups

• Yardmaster – Developer/visionary driving regional development and/or a type of technology

• Inventor – Creator/mastermind

While mogul and inventor don’t refer specifically to railroads,moguls did build them and inventors created all that has run on tracks.

The Top Companies

We also will name five corporate winners:

• The Express – Non-stop on way to success

• The Turnaround – (The railroad turntable, turning engines around to run in opposite direction) – A rebuilt company

• The Golden Spike – A solid, grind-it-out day to day company

• The Subway – A company emerging from stealth mode

• Riding The Third Rail – A company achieving success on a deadly “third rail” where other companies have tried and failed

The Nominees

Here are the selections for voters:

Mogul:

Jason Caplain and David Jones, Bull City Partners
Chris Heivly and David Neal, The Startup Factory
Dave Rizzo and Lister Delgado, IDEA Fund Partners
Christy Shaffer, Hatteras Ventures
Karen LeVert, Southeast TechInventures

Conductor:

Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor
Hugh Shelton, Red Hat
Tim Sweeney, Epic Games
Michael Zapata, Protochips
Henry Kaestner, Bandwidth
Ron De Lange, Tekelec/Oracle
Christy Shaffer, Hatteras Ventures

Engineer:

Brooks Bell, HQ Raleigh
Joy Parr Drach, Advanced Animal Diagnostics
Tom Pike, Quintiles
Stephen Wiehe, SciQuest
Scot Wingo, ChannelAdvisor
Robbie Allen, Automated Insight
Aaron Houghton, BoostSuite
Justin Miller, WedPics
Judd Bowman, Appia
David Morken, Bandwidth

Fireman:

Tom Kurke, Geomagic
Scott Fredenic, Automated Insights
Tobias Walter, Shoeboxed
Chris Chuang, Bandwidth

Brakeman:

John Baule, ChannelAdvisor
Kevin Gordon, Quintiles
Karen Adams, Aerial Biopharma and Exodos Life Science
Bennett Love, BioKier Inc.

Signalman:

Nate Talbot, Spreedly
Steven Lorenz, Neuse River Networks
Robert Simora, Rail Inc.
Jay Strum, G1 Therapeutics
Ben Yerxa, Liquidia Technologies

Rookie Entrepreneur:

Ginger Dosier, BioMASON
Leigh Ann Ryals, Able Device
Todd John, PlayerSpace
Ryan Becklland and Drew Schiller, Validic
Anil Chawla, ArchiveSocial
Jake Stauch, Neurospire
Coleman Greene, Sqord

Steward:

Brooks Bell, HQ Raleigh
Adam Klein, American Underground
Dhruv Patel, Council for Entrepreneurial Development
Tom Looney, Seahawk Innovation Fund
Terri Lomax, Vice Chancellor of Research, Innovation and Economic Development NC State University

Yardmaster: