Boulder Chamber honors variety of business champions

BOULDER — The Boulder Chamber recognized six honorees on Wednesday at its 2018 Celebration of Leadership.

• Doyle Albee, president and CEO of MAPRagency, received the Community Impact Award not just for pioneering strategies in public relations, but for “his personification of the ‘give first’ philosophy that is the secret sauce of Boulder’s leadership as a startup community,” a statement announcing the winners said. Albee spends much of his personal time fostering the startup community by hosting Denver and Boulder Open Coffee Clubs, sponsoring events like Boulder Startup Week and SheSays Boulder and providing mentorship to groups like the Boomtown Accelerator and Boulder Bits startup studio.
• Sharon Matusik, Dean of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder, received the Rising Star Award for the direction she is taking the school through increasing its engagement with the startup community. She has also championed the effort to recruit more women and minorities to student and faculty positions.
• Black Lab Sports and Terrapin Care Station were both recognized as Innovative Companies of the Year. Black Lab Sports is an ecosystem and platform that invests in, launches and scales companies looking to improve human performance. The company’s original warehouse has been converted to an entrepreneurial space, sports performance laboratory, art studio, sculpture study and non-profit to teach young interns how to start a business. Terrapin Care Station is a leader for corporate responsibility in the cannabis industry, contributing more than $250,000 to community events, nonprofits and advocacy organizations since its seven years in operation. TCS has also started a global opioid epidemic awareness campaign.  “In an industry facing constant scrutiny, community engagement is particularly valuable as a way to prove the positive public impacts this industry has the ability to provide, with TCS leading the way,” the statement said.
• Scott Green, site director of Google Boulder, received the Virginia Patterson Business Person of the Year award, for Google Boulder’s work as a contributor to the city, under Green’s leadership. Last year employees dedicated nearly 5,000 community service hours to local organizations and Google invested in $41.7 million of state-issued bonds to develop affordable housing in Boulder in one of the largest public-private affordable housing deals in Boulder County history. “Though the list of his contributions is extensive,” the statement said, “the example Green has set for his team — and for other businesses — is a model of actions speaking louder than words.”
• Steve Bosley, founder of the BolderBOULDER, received the Franny Reich Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his career in baking and lifetime of service to Boulder County and the State of Colorado, Bosley created the world-renowned BoulderBOULDER 10K road race, which is now celebrating 40 years and brings 50,000 amateur and professional runners from around the globe as well as about 50,000 spectators.