Contest organized by Mass Technology Leadership Council, Inc.

Jul 19, 2009 10:20 GMT  ·  By
The second round of finalists has been announced for the Technology Leadership Awards 2009
   The second round of finalists has been announced for the Technology Leadership Awards 2009

The Mass Technology Leadership Council, Inc. has recently made public the second team of finalists for the Council’s annual Technology Leadership Awards. These awards are meant to honor Massachusetts companies and individuals that are the most relevant illustrations of excellence and leadership in technology and business, and they also reward achievements in areas such as development and deployment of technologies.

The groups of finalists revealed on July 17th were in several categories, as follows: Chief Technology Officer; Emerging Executive; Investor; and Emerging Innovative Company of the year.

These are the Emerging Executive finalists: Alex Chriss, business leader, Intuit Partner Platform, Intuit; Patricia Cotter, vice president Worldwide Operations, Netezza Corporation; Joel Curry, chief operating officer, Experian QAS; Lesley Dickie, senior director, Raytheon Company; Justin Steinman, vice president, Solution & Product Marketing, Novell, Inc. When it comes to the Chief Technology Office category, here are the nominees: Seth Coe-Sullivan, chief technology officer, QD Vision; Alexei Erchak, chief technology officer & founder, Luminus Devices; Jeff Flowers, chief technology officer, Carbonite; Jascha Franklin-Hodge, chief technology officer, Blue State Digital; and Rob Malan, co-founder, chief technology officer, Arbor Networks.

Those interested in the Emerging Innovative Companies for 2009, the finalists are: American Well, CloudSwitch, Ksplice, uTest and WiTricity. Last but not least, Mass Technology Leadership Council, Inc. has chosen as finalists for the Investor categories the following persons: Ajay Agarwal, managing director, Bain Capital Ventures; David Barrett, general partner, Polaris Ventures; Joel Cutler, managing director, General Catalyst; James Geshwiler, managing director, Common Angels, and Bijan Sabet, partner, Spark Capital.

“We are very excited to announce this year’s second set of nominees, who have set themselves apart by exemplifying the spirit of innovation and the future promise that define the Massachusetts technology community,” Tom Hopcroft, president of the Mass Technology Leadership Council, said.

On the other hand, on June 25, 2009, the Awards program announced the first group of finalists for other categories, such as Public Sector Organization; Private Sector Company; Innovator; CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and CIO (Chief Information Officer) of the year.

The finalists for the Public Sector Organization category are: Babson College, City of Boston – MIS Department, Town of Brookline and WBUR. The final nominees for the second category are the following: Glasshouse Technologies, Pegasystems, Phase Forward, Starent Networks and Turbine. The position of the best Innovator of the year will go to one of these finalists: Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; Rich Miner, managing director, Google Ventures; Timothy Rowe, CEO, Cambridge Innovation Center or Dharmesh Shah, chief technology officer and founder, HubSpot.

Those who reached the final stage of competition for the best CEO of the year are: Colin Angle, chairman, CEO and co-founder, iRobot; Brian Halligan, CEO and co-founder, HubSpot; David Patrick, president and CEO, xkoto; Michael Simon, CEO, LogMeIn and Brian Zanghi, CEO, Kadient. The award of the best CIO of 2009 is to be assigned to one of the following: George Brenckle, CIO, UMass Memorial Health Center; Bill Fandrich, CIO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Jay Leader, CIO, iRobot; Anne Margulies, CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or John Polizzi, CIO, BJ’s Wholesale Club.

The nomination process has been an open one, therefore the organizers received more than 160 submissions, while the selection has been performed by local-thought leaders, media, as well as Council Trustees. The winners for all categories will be revealed on November 5th, at the Fall Awards Gala.