Hermosa Beach Chamber awards not your father’s chamber awards
by Kevin Cody
The annual Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce Awards and Officer Installation Dinner will look different this year. There will be familiar awards such as Best New Business, Best of Hermosa Business and Chamber Member of the Year. But there will also be a Made in Hermosa Award, a Making a Difference Award, and a D.I.G (Diverse, Inclusive, Gender-Equal) Award.
In the sharpest break from tradition, there will not be awards for Man and Woman of the Year. Instead, there will be a Person of the Year Award.
“The tradition of Man and Woman of the Year has been a Hermosa treasure for many, many decades,” Chamber CEO Jessica Accamando said this week. “So many, that we have actually come to realize we have honored most of our amazing community stakeholders, and each year the Board of Directors has found it increasingly difficult to find a large enough pool of new candidates to consider for nomination. For this reason, we have taken the simple step to reduce the award to a single person for this year.”
“We are open in future years to honoring more than one person again, but do not want to limit ourselves by gender. It is possible in future years there would be two outstanding women for example,” Accamando added.
Award nominations will be accepted through Friday, Jan. 7 at HBChamber.net. The top three nominees in each category will then be voted on by chamber members. Nominees must be chamber members.
The awards dinner will be held Monday, Jan. 24, at the Lighthouse Cafe on Pier Plaza. Tickets are $100 for chamber members and $125 for non members. ER