From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 13 2010 - 09:08:15 EDT
http://www.su-spectator.com/news/red-winged-award-honors-local-business-leaders-1.1479600
Red Winged award honors local business leaders
By Dillon Gilbert
*Published: *Wednesday, May 12, 2010
*Updated: *Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Creating the Red Winged Leadership Award was tough for the Albers School of
Business graduate students who took it on. First and foremost, they had to
define leadership.
Last fall, a class of 20 graduate students in a leadership seminar were
challenged by their professor, Jennifer Marrone of Albers. She asked them to
consider and define leadership and then use the results as criteria to honor
local business leaders that exemplified those criteria.
“As a class, we collectively struggled with, ‘What does leadership mean to
us,’” said Justin Poe, an Albers graduate student in the class. They would
come up with the following: “Engaging others to inspire change for the
greater good.”
With their mantra set, the Graduate Students for Leadership Formation
created the first annual Red Winged Award ceremony. It will present three
finalists, with one to win a free year of business consulting.
The class organized itself into committees, somewhat fashioned from the
model in which a business might run, so that they would be better able to
organize the event.
The spotting committee came up with 14 local businesses as potential
finalists and wrote a biography and assessment of each. The selection
committee then narrowed down the list to six, according to Poe.
For the final round of judging, the students elected to bring in outside
help. Among the five jurors who picked the three finalists from the narrowed
down list were former Seattle mayor Norm Rice and JP Morgan Chase Northwest
CEO Phyllis Campbell.
With the last three finalists chosen, the students again looked at the
background of the candidates. All three rounds of selection were guided by
three themes: leadership, business acumen and social impact.
The jurors selected Rahwa Habte, Dylan Higgins and Linda Ruthruff. Habte
runs Hidmo, an Eritrean restaurant and arts hub on the corner of 23rd Avenue
and Jackson Street. Famous for fostering local music, the lounge is iconic
for its social impact in the Central District. It works to provide a safe
space for community engagement and activism, especially among neighborhood
teens, according to Habte.
Higgins runs SaveTogether.org, a website that matches donors with struggling
people trying to save money for a higher purpose such as college or
purchasing a home. Currently, the site has more than 30 “savers.”
Finally, there is Linda Ruthruff’s Street Bean Espresso. It employs local
at-risk homeless youth for up to two years in order to give them a means to
get off the streets. Her business also runs on an eco-friendly platform in
addition to selling fair trade coffee.
“Each of their stories is different, but they have all experienced a lot of
trauma,” she said of her employees. “They have had to grow up pretty much on
their own.”
Many programs are shorter than Street Bean Espresso, according to Ruthruff,
and the two years they offer may allow for greater impact.
The award ceremony and the selection of the final winner will take place
Thursday night, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Pigott Auditorium.
*Dillon may be reached at dgilbert@su-spectator.com*
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