12 July 2010

Admin in the Spotlight: Interview with Lynn Holgate, 2010 Stevie® Award winner

Lynn Holgate, an Executive Assistant at High Performance Technologies, Inc. (HPTI) in Reston, Virginia, has been awarded the 2010 Stevie® Award for Support Staffer of the Year.

The Stevie® Awards is a prestigious award honouring the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and business people worldwide.  The fact that they have a category for Support Staffer of the Year is recognition of the important role support staff play in any organization.

Lynn was in good company as some notable winners of the 2010 Stevie® Awards included:

- Executive of the Year: Lawrence J. Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle
- Best Overall Company of the Year: Apple Inc.
- Business Turnaround of the Year: Ford Motor Company
- Best Home Page: CNN.com
- Environmental Responsibility Program of the Year: The Timberland Company
- Customer Service Team of the Year: Cigna
- Most Innovative Company of the Year: Mozilla
- Fastest Growing Company of the Year: Yodle
- Communications or PR Campaign of the Year: Hilton Hotels
- New Product or Service of the Year: Chase Card Services, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Lynn has worked at HPTI for 8 ½ years and was thrilled to be recognized at this level. She says it has added a jump in her step to come to work in the mornings knowing that her peers have recognized her in this way and that her colleagues who nominated her feel that way about her. Lynn has been in the administrative field for 28 years and to be honoured like this has confirmed that her efforts and hard work have been appreciated.

Ms. Holgate is the Executive Assistant to the President, she also reports to the Director of Human Resources and manages a staff of four. Lynn has organized strategic events such as the company's internal trade show, all-hands meetings, the annual awards banquet, internal events and leadership off-site meetings. She said that receiving the award has made her proud to do the work that she does. Her family and friends were also very excited for her.

On the night of the awards Lynn reports she was sitting at a table with nine of her colleagues from HPTI including the Senior Vice-President. When she was announced the winner, the Senior Vice-President sent a text message to the President about her win and when she sat down after making her speech she saw a message from the President congratulating her.

It was an exciting night for HPTI as Jonathan Goodnight was also awarded Technical Professional of the Year and they were finalists in ten other categories, including Best Recognition Event, Best Corporate Communicator, Best Product Developer and Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year.

Congratulations again to Lynn Holgate for a job well done!

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