From outer space to Ukraine to the concourses of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, the winners of this year’s Impact Awards were doing things first — and making a big difference.
We created the Impact Awards in 2018 to celebrate the people and teams inside large, established organizations who were creating quantifiable value through innovative and experimental projects.
Some companies nominate their own initiatives, while others are submitted to the process by our editorial team and judges (see below for the list of this year’s judges.)
This year, we’re recognizing nine winners and one special commendation. For more details about each initiative, please see our post about the 2022 Impact Award finalists.
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Our Winners
Airbnb — For leveraging its platform to provide emergency housing for 100,000 refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.
Partners: Global Empowerment Mission, EURODIS-Rare Disease Europe, and Planting Peace
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts — For the FastPass proof-of-concept that worked to process prior authorizations in real time, by applying artificial intelligence. The program, FastPass, decreased costs; lessened burden to providers and patients; and lightened administrative load.
Partners: New England Baptist Hospital, Olive A.I.
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport — For creating and deploying the world’s first digital concierge in an airport, Iris, which helps passengers with information by using speech recognition and artificial intelligence.
Partners: IBM Watson, Soul Machines
Iris with the DFW team that helped make her creation possible.
Iris, DFW’s digital concierge
Curious about how Iris works? Check out this workflow.
Highmark Health — For its transformation initiative, thinkUP, which empowered employees to accelerate the core business’ growth by developing new approaches to cut costs and optimize time. ThinkUp has since evolved into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Highmark called Lumevity.
Innovators for Ukraine (In4Ukraine) — For helping to provide connections, donations, and relief to Ukrainians in need since March 2022. The group has hired six Ukrainian women; put several thousand dollars toward humanitarian support; and has created networks to help Ukrainians support and communicate with one another.
Partners: Massachusetts Innovation Network, ACTION Innovation Network, Mansfield Bio Incubator, Ukraine Forward
Kasia and Eric of Innovators for Ukraine delivered supplies to the Grochowa School in Wrocław, Poland, where 200 Ukrainians received temporary housing.
Children create art projects at the Innovators for Ukraine area in the World Central Kitchen (another one of our winners) in Wrocław. The two organizations have partnered to provide meals and support.
Members of In4Ukraine; Ukrainian artist and craftspeople; and Polish business experts gather at the Regional Public Library in Wrocław, which provided free space during a two-week period.
Eric, Kasia, Yvgenia, and Katya from In4Ukraine giving some bridge cash to a mother and child who had a hard time since arriving in Poland after fleeing Ukraine.
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and NASA — For their work launching a spacecraft that altered the course of the asteroid Dimorphos. This test proved NASA has the technology to alter the course of asteroids, which could some day protect the earth from disastrous hits.
Kitson & Partners — For its creation of Babcock Ranch, an intentional community in Florida. The community generates and uses solar energy and, partly due to its storm-proof infrastructure, had very few issues weathering Hurricane Ian.
Merchants Fleet — For its Condition Assessment Program, which allows clients to conduct their own vehicle assessments when renting and returning a vehicle for their fleet. This reduced average assessment times; cut costs; and greatly decreased the amount of manual labor needed.
Walmart — For its partnership with Gatik, an autonomous truck startup that uses driverless trucks to deliver merchandise between a Walmart dark store and a Walmart Neighborhood Market, one of the retailer’s smaller-format grocery stores. The trucks make between four and seven trips each day, and the operations have resulted in roughly 30 percent cost savings.
Partner: Gatik
Walmart has put Gatik’s fully driverless vehicles on the road in Bentonville, Arkansas.
The driverless trucks take a 7.1-mile route between a Walmart dark store and a neighborhood market.
While the trucks are fully driverless, Walmart employees load and unload the trucks manually.
World Central Kitchen — For its work serving millions of meals to people affected by natural disasters, humanitarian crises, and man-made conflict. As of May 2022, WCK was delivering food bundles and serving hot meals in more than 230 cities and towns across Ukraine, many of which did not have functional grocery stores. In the week that followed Hurricane Ian in Florida, it served 200,000 meals.
Congrats to all of our winners and finalists, and thanks to our judges for the 2022 awards. They were:
- Robyn Bolton, Founder, MileZero
- Erik Falck, Head of Innovation, Johnsonville
- Jay Gerhart, VP — Innovation Engine, Atrium Health
- Colleen Hau, VP of Product & Programs, Newlab
- Michael McCathren, Senior Principal — Enterprise Innovation, Chick-fil-a; author, 6Ps of Essential Innovation
- Uma Meyyappan, SVP — Head of Digital Innovation, LPL Financial
- Curtis Michelson, Co-Founder, INFOdj
- Gina O’Connor, Professor of Innovation Management, Babson College
- Tracy Rossetini, R&D Director — Early Stage Innovation, Pepsico
- Djuana Stoakely, Lead Strategic Designer — KeyString Labs, Entergy
