Startups

DC: Here are your nominees for the 2019 Technical.ly Awards

Voting is open through Nov. 7 for the awards in categories spanning startups, impact and inventions. Join us IRL this December to see who wins.

Winners of the 2017 Technical.ly DC Awards. (Photo by James Cullum)
Every day, we at Technical.ly talk to technologists, entrepreneurs and leaders building in D.C. They span different categories of company and job title, and have different paths and plans for getting to the ultimate destination.

Through them all, a couple of threads become clear: a resounding commitment to making an impact in the DMV, and the fact that bringing change is hard.

So, let’s take a night to get together and recognize the people, companies and partnerships powering the local community. They deserve it.

The 2019 Technical.ly Awards are coming to D.C. this December, highlighting the people and teams making big contributions inside new ventures, and on the local economy as a whole. Our first-ever RealLIST Engineers will be honored that night, too.

But first, we have to pick the winners. And we need your help. Follow the link below to vote in seven categories. Voting is open through Thursday, Nov. 7. For some added background, check out more about each nominee below.

Vote for the 2019 Technical.ly Awards

We last hosted D.C. awards in 2017. A little bit about the process: The Technical.ly DC Awards are an online vote highlighting the best in new thinking. The Technical.ly DC team curates a list of nominees to be voted on by the local tech community — one vote per person. Though candidates can be nominated in multiple years and for different categories, no one can win the same category more than once. The spirit is to welcome in new leaders.

And the nominees are …

Invention of the Year

Impact Leader of the Year

CTO of the Year

  • Lindsey Parker, chief technology officer for the D.C government, who was unanimously voted in back in March
  • Jess Szmajda, chief technology officer at Axios, who created the DC Tech Slack group, Joy of Programming Meetup and formerly served as CTO at Optoro
  • Young Hahn, chief technology officer at Mapbox, and a designer and engineer helping his team grow by way of mentorship
  • Emily Dresner, chief technology officer at Upside Business Travel, who leads a team of more than 50 engineers to power Upside’s REST-based Node.js and machine learning-powered work travel platform
  • Chris DeMay, chief technology officer at Hawkeye 360, who is also the founder of the company and conceptualized the idea for Hawkey 360 while he was working for the U.S. government

Startup of the Year

  • HUNGRY, the Rosslyn, Virginia-based office catering startup that curates an online marketplace that connects independent chefs directly with the catering market and closed an $8 million Series A funding round in April
  • WhyHotel, the H Street Corridor-based company temporarily that turns new luxury apartment building units into pop-up hotel suites as the building works to fill the vacancies with leased tenants, and closed a $10 million Series A funding round in December 2018
  • Curbio, the Potomac, Maryland-based real estate tech company founded in 2017 that curates a platform to help realtors manage renovation projects while also helping homeowners flip their homes to make a better profit
  • Aperiomics, the Sterling, Virginia-based biotech startup using genomic analysis to detect every known pathogen from a sample of any nature in just one test
  • MemoryWell, the D.C.-based startup that created a network of professional journalists who interview seniors and their families

Growth Company of the Year

Corporate Innovation of the Year

Culture Builder of the Year

  • Hilliary Turnipseed, the talent and culture advisor who leads Hilliary Turnipseed Consulting and managed talent acquisition for Upside Travel, POLITICO, Discovery Communications and Blackboard
  • Julie Elberfeld, senior VP of shared technology at Capital One, who launched the company’s internal Women in Tech program and is a leading voice for diversity initiatives across the company
  • Gerald Kierce-Iturrioz, the chief of staff at FiscalNote, who worked his way up to this role over the past five years, starting out at the company as a customer success manager
  • Steven A. Rodriguez, Techstars’ regional manager of startup programs for U.S. and Canada
  • Pearlie Oni, the senior manager of employee experience at Alexandria-based marketing agency RedPeg
Vote for the 2019 Technical.ly Awards
Companies: SEED SPOT / Upside Travel / Upside Business Travel / Placemakr / Byte Back / Quorum / Mapbox / TransitScreen / Aquicore / Capital One / Framebridge / Optoro / Techstars / FiscalNote / Accenture

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