SYRACUSE, N.Y. — CenterState CEO on Wednesday used its annual meeting to honor five area organizations with its “Business of the Year” awards in five different categories.
The award recipients included Anoplate Corp.; Chocolate Pizza Company Inc.; Le Moyne College; Dermody, Burke & Brown, CPAs, LLC; and the Law Offices of Jose Perez, PC.
More than 1,000 business and community leaders attended the annual meeting held at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter, in Syracuse, according to the organization’s news release on the event.
CenterState CEO dubbed the event, “Disrupt: Challenge the Status Quo.”
Anoplate of Syracuse, which specializes in surface engineering, won the award in the “More than 50 Employees” category. Chocolate Pizza Company of Marcellus won the honor in the “Less than 50 Employees.”
CenterState CEO honored Le Moyne College in the “Nonprofit” category.
In addition, Syracuse accounting firm Dermody, Burke & Brown, CPAs won the award in the “Community Involvement” category. And the Law Offices of Jose Perez, PC won in the “Minority-owned Business” category, which CenterState CEO presented in partnership with the Upstate Minority Economic Alliance.
In his remarks, Robert Simpson, president & CEO of CenterState CEO, called on event attendees to “disrupt the factors that create a cycle of economic stagnation, and fully seize the wealth of opportunities” available to the region through the CNY Rising plan, according to the release.
“CNY Rising from the ground up” is the name of the plan that the Central New York regional economic-development council submitted for consideration in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2015 statewide economic-development contest. The state awarded the region $500 million after reviewing that plan.
Simpson challenged the region to take risks and to act collaboratively to confront “critical” issues like poverty, government modernization, and “transformative” infrastructure projects.
“Today our region is at a major turning point; the current challenges and opportunities before us are a provocation to do better,” Simpson said in the release. “This requires stakeholders and partners across the community to be equally involved in the outcomes. We all have a vested interest in a better future. As a community we must reject the status quo and be willing to put in the hard work necessary to achieve true regional prosperity.”
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com