International Coach Federation New England held 3rd annual Gratitude Awards Gala & Coaching Hall of Fame, Mon. June 17
DATELINE: WESTBOROUGH, MA, BOSTON, MA and BOXBOROUGH, MA
International Coach Federation New England(ICFNE) created the Annual Gratitude Awards Gala & Coaching Hall of Fame to honor the personal and business coaches who have demonstrated their exemplary coaching skills as well as served as ambassadors to the coaching community, industry and world. On June 17 at its annual Gala at the Doubletree Hotel in Westborough, MA, ICNFE announced the Coach of the Year awards, the Prism Awards, a Special Recognition Award, and inducted a new member to its Hall of Fame. The Business Coach of the Year Award was presented to Suzan Czajkowski, MyCommCoach, of Boxborough, MA.
The Coach of the Year Awards – known within the association as “the Leonards” – recognize ICFNE members in five different coaching categories: Business Coaching, Career Coaching, Life Coaching, Executive Coaching and Rookie-of-the-Year. Suzan Czajkowski, owner of MyCommCoach, won her award in the Business Coaching category.
All ICFNE coaches are eligible to be nominated. ICFNE encourages its members to nominate coaches based on “demonstrated mastery with their coaching through various outlets including their clients, workshops, and service to their colleagues and the community.”
“It is always an honor to be recognized for the work you do,” said Czajkowski, “and this one even more so because it comes from my peers in the coaching community. I do a lot of online marketing work directly with ICFNE and I think it has been helpful to many of the coaches involved within the organization.”
As a Communication and Online Marketing Coach, Czajkowski works with small businesses and entrepreneurs so they can spend less effort getting better results marketing their businesses online. “Love and passion for our own product or service is what drives us to open our own business, but then we are confounded by all of the things we need to do to run that business. It can get miserable for a small business owner very quickly when they’re working on everything except the one thing that they got into business to do. My intention is to help them learn to do their own marketing in a way that can keep their costs down, their frustrations down and their sense of ownership and happiness with their business up.”
The Coach of the Year Awards recognize coaches within five categories – Executive, Career, Life, Business, and Rookie – who have demonstrated mastery with their coaching, through work they do with their clients and by their innovative workshop offerings within the past few years. The winners in each category for this year’s Annual Thomas Leonard Coach of the Year Awards are:
Executive Coach of the Year: Angie O’Donnell and Ted Gorski (a tie)
Business Coach of the Year: Suzan Czajkowski
Career Coach of the Year: Bonnie Petrovich
Life Coach of the Year: Anne Barry Jolles
Rookie of the Year: Elizabeth McGrory
ICFNE’s 2013 Hall of Fame inductee is Maya Balle, co-founder of Liz Walker Journey Productions, a nonprofit organization seeking to increase public awareness of human rights issues around the world. Balle was introduced at the ceremony by her friend and co-founder, Liz Walker, an award-winning television journalist, humanitarian, an ordained minister, senior pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church, and a well-known face in the Boston community.
The criteria for selection to the Hall of Fame require that the individual is a Master Certified Coach; has contributed to the local chapter and Global ICF community; and has made significant contributions and impacted community efforts to promote coaching to the world wide business community. The select few who are inducted into the Hall of Fame serve as models for ICFNE membership and the coaching community world-wide.
Two organizations received the inaugural ICFNE Prism Award: BJ’s Wholesale Club and Axis Communications. Recipients of the Prism Award are recognized businesses and organizations that demonstrate how professional coaching—used as a leadership strategy—pays off on many fronts. This award has become the epitome of what professional coaching can accomplish at the corporate/organizational level.
ICFNE presented a Special Recognition Award this year to the Massachusetts Conference for Women (MCW), to celebrate the partnership between the MCW and the ICFNE in bringing coaching to the women of Boston through the annual December conference.
The ICF is a nonprofit and is the leading global organization dedicated to advancing the coaching profession through both personal and business coaching. ICFNE is the fourth largest ICF chapter in the world.
Profits from the ICFNE ceremony are being donated to One Fund Boston, the Victim Relief Fund created to assist those families of the victims of the tragic events during the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Ed Evarts, ICFNE President said, “I am deeply touched by the donations that we are receiving for One Fun Boston from ICF Chapters around the Globe.” ICFNE raised over $3,550.00.
This annual June event is open to the public. For more information on ICFNE, please visit www.ICFNE.org. For more information about Suzan Czajkowski, please contact (617) 320-7382 or visit www.MyCommCoach.com.
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