Best Tech Startup (NYC) | Neverware is the New York-based company behind the CloudReady operating system, which enables schools and businesses alike to enjoy the Chromebook experience they want on the PCs and Macs they already have. Driven by the question, “How can students, teachers and consumers get the experience of using a new, powerful computer without buying one?” - Neverware’s products turn thousands of old computers across New York City schools into powerful, usable machines. At Neverware, shoes are optional. Community and commitment are core values, but so is passion. Fun fact: CloudReady’s development is powered in large part by coffee, Diet Coke, seltzer, beer, and the cheese cubes and hummus that are critical elements of their weekly Fresh Direct order.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley)| HP has long been committed to diversity and creating an inclusive environment where all voices and perspectives are heard, valued, and respected. It’s embedded in our values and our culture – The HP Way. Innovation at HP springs from teams of individuals collaborating and contributing varied perspectives, knowledge, and experience to advance how the world works and lives. We are driven to create products that work for everyone, everywhere. Diverse teams create transformative solutions that better serve our customers and the communities where we work and live. To find, develop, and keep the very best people, we embrace and celebrate difference. Leadership: When Hewlett-Packard Co. separated into two new independent, publicly traded companies in November 2015 (creating Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.), Chief Human Resources Officer Tracy Keogh saw an opportunity to model HP’s commitment to diversity and inclusion at the highest levels of the company. This started with creating one of the most diverse Board of Directors in the tech industry, an intentional, nine-month process that required a commitment from both CEOs and existing board members, pressure on the search firm to look broadly for diverse candidates, and strategic partnerships with affinity groups to reach a more diverse pool of candidates. It continued with assembling an Executive Leadership Team representing different genders, nationalities, and experiences. HP’s executive leadership team is 27% minority and 27% women. Women hold the roles of Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel, Chief Communications Officer, and interim Chief Operating Officer. In June 2017, Dion Weisler, HP President and CEO, took a pledge as part of the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion on behalf of HP. This sign of public support has set the tone of our values and priorities for our leadership, employees, partners and customers. We operate a Global Diversity Advisory Board with senior leaders from across our regions, functions, and lines of business. These executives are diveristy thought leaders and advocates who are establishing strategic priorities and building teams at the business and local levels to drive progress. Across the company, diversity oversight spans our business groups who manage this via diversity councils, task force efforts and PMO’s. Strategy: Through our BIG strategy (Belong, Innovate, Grow), we are seeding the importance of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences across the company and working to minimize bias in our systems, processes, and programs – from the talent we seek to hire, to the ways we develop and grow our talent, to how we engage, communicate, and reward.

Best Tech Work Culture (Washington DC) | Blackstone Federal is driving creativity and innovation within the IT industry, not just by crafting custom, comprehensive solutions with cutting-edge technology and methodologies, but also by building a uniquely supportive and inclusive company culture and supporting the growth and positive change of the DC Metro community Blackstone calls home.

Best Tech Workplace Diversity (Boston) | MineralTree breaks the mold of a typical startup by employing team members that span a broad range of age groups.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Toronto) | At Wattpad, we’ve long recognized that diversity is our strength. Our company culture, our teams, our ability to innovate, and ultimately our product, are all made stronger by the variety of perspectives, experiences, and voices that make up Wattpad. Wattpad’s commitment to diversity has been established since Day 1. The fact that we were founded by two people of colour (one of whom is an immigrant), in Canada (one of the most diverse countries in the world), has helped us maintain a more diverse perspective than most technology companies. In fact, one of our core values is #Inclusive. Today, we’re proud to say that a majority--56%--of Wattpad employees are women and for a more intersectional look at our team composition, we’re proud to say that People of Colour make up close to half (45%) of all Wattpad employees and 41% of our Leadership Team. Company-wide, 21% of Wattpad employees are Women of Colour, 15% are non-native English speakers, 8% identify as having a disability, 13% identify as LGBTQ+, and 3% are transgender.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) |At Smartling, being yourself is encouraged. No one tries to make you be a certain way. The management team does a good job of bringing out the best in everyone and making them the best versions of themselves.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (San Francisco) | Mapbox strives to embed Diversity & Inclusion focused best practices into workflows across their organization. They believe this strategic outlook yields better hiring outcomes and inclusion effectiveness.

Best Tech Startup (Los Angeles) | LeafLink, the largest wholesale marketplace for the cannabis industry, has over $600MM in annualized revenue moving through its many verticals, allowing 600+ brands and over 2,100 retailers to create efficiencies with its custom-built cannabis commerce platform, with inventory management, streamlined ordering processes, and CRM capabilities.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley)| Scaled Inference relies on an in house recruiter and a variety of scouting resources to pool the best talent, and start up hungry powerhouse candidates. Scaled Inference is devised (currently) of 21 “Amp’loyees”, representing 11 different countries and a team that is nearly ⅓ female, boasts 17 graduate degrees, and 2 dogs. Engineering consists of 3 teams: Frontend, Backend, and Inference. Other teams include: Marketing, People Ops and Finance. We’ve an open calendar policy and individuals can request a meeting across teams and collaborate with anyone across the company.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | Airfox is on a mission is to extend critical financial services to billions of unbanked and underbanked people in emerging markets around the globe.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | The Elemental Machines team is comprised of transformative leaders with diverse professional backgrounds. Team members have previously worked in the energy, media, education, life sciences, consumer, and technology industries. So,what brings this unique group of individuals together? The answer is that each team member is motivated to be a part of the pioneering team for IoT for life sciences industry.

Best Tech Startup (Los Angeles) | Described as the ‘Uber’ for content, Social Native is making high-quality custom content available to all brands with the click of a button. By paying talented consumers, globally, to create content for the brands they love, Social Native is bridging the gap between content supply and demand to create unparalleled efficiency and scale in the creative industry.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Toronto) | Diversity is a goal Rubikloud prides itself on achieving; our senior leadership team sets an example by achieving a 50% women executive ratio and spans diverse backgrounds and experience. Our diverse teams fill different gaps in different ways - when we find the right “fit” we have to have that person because of who they are and what they bring to the table in regards to skills, experience, fit, talent, stamina, etc. It’s Rubikloud’s belief that, when building a team of the “collective best” people to create a high potential team, then diversity has to be integral to that strategy to fill all the gaps by thinkers who together, use all sides of the brain and bring diverse backgrounds & life experiences that inform their perspectives.

Best Tech Manager (Boston) | David Safaii is CEO of Trilio, the Massachusetts-based data protection company that’s taking on the backup paradigm. David joined Trilio in 2014 as the company’s first non-founding team member and has grown the company from a fledgling start-up to a venture-backed, rapidly growing cloud infrastructure-as-a-service company. In only a couple of years, David secured the resources to develop and productize what started as an open source project, brought the new solution to market, quickly secured a handful of key customers, and locked down a series A funding round to continue the company’s growth. Through David’s leadership, Trilio has since been on a rapid growth trajectory (of both customers and employees), with even more accomplishments to come. Throughout all these milestones, Trilio remains a relatively lean company in an industry filled with heavily funded startups and weighty enterprise organizations. David uses this as an opportunity to take an active role in managing both his direct reports, and the development of the company as a whole.

Best Tech Startup (San Francisco) | HomeLight was created in 2012 by its founder after having a terrible buying experience in the Bay Area. He realized there was a need to streamline and optimize what is for some the biggest investment they will make in their lives, buying a home. The company doubled in size in 2014 and is continuing to grow.

Best Tech Manager (Washington DC) | Since forming CVP, Anirudh Kulkarni, CVP’s CEO, has worked for the past 15 years to develop the firm into one of the most innovative and fastest growing technology consulting companies in the industry. In 2017, CVP’s staff grew from 181 employees to over 300. Concurrently, CVP’s year-over-year revenue grew 51% and it has tripled its office space. In the past two years CVP’s projects have been recognized for several awards including AFCEA Industry Leader of the Year Award, two finalist projects for the Greater Washington Innovation Awards, and two consecutive FedHealthIT Innovation Awards. CVP has been on Inc. Magazine’s “Fastest Growing Companies” list for 8 years, and CVP and Mr. Kulkarni were recipients of the Association of Corporate Growth Award in 2018.

Best Tech Startup (Silicon Valley) |Our SaaS solutions, iQueue for Operating Rooms and iQueue for Infusion Centers create significant impact for both patients, surgeons, and cancer/infusion centers. With regards to iQueue for Operating Rooms, imagine a system similar to "Open Table" that allows surgeons to reserve or release surgical block time, thereby ensuring a hospital's operating room is effectively and efficiently used. Our iQueue for Infusion Centers SaaS is used by 30 of the top cancer centers across the US, ensuring patients are seen within 15 minutes (versus a 60-90 minute wait time, w/o our SaaS) and maximizing nursing staff and infusion chair count.

Best Tech Manager (Chicago) | Sam oversees the entire Production department at Jellyvision: 53 people. Not only does she inspire those 53 people to do the nigh impossible, year after year, but she’s made it her goal to help them climb the ranks of the department, from Production Associate to Production Specialist, from Senior Production Specialist to Production Manager. Sam leads her reports to build great software, and she builds up her reports to lead great careers.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Toronto) | We strive to have an inclusive, open, and diverse culture. We hope to create a kind place to work; one in which everyone feels valued, free to speak their mind, and be who they are. We strive to invest in people first and give back where we can. We are dedicated to being a diverse and equal place of employment and for our people to support each other wherever and whenever possible. Klick is fortunate to be headquartered in one of the most diverse cities in the world and we take full advantage of it. Klick’s workforce is culturally diverse and always has been, and we love to celebrate it. Our people speak at least 18 different languages. Two of our three partners are 1st generation immigrants, and Klick is active in supporting employees who are applying for permanent resident or citizenship status.

Best Tech Startup (Silicon Valley) | Petuum is a combined team of industry veterans and mission-driven AI scientists from the world's leading AI institute, Carnegie Mellon University. We witnessed the problems with existing AI solutions: specialized machined learning experts hand craft a one-off models, a process that is slow, expensive and not scalable. We've made it our mission to change this! We are making AI accessible to all businesses by turning AI from an artisan-craft into a standardized, industrial-grade enterprise tool. This enables the fast development and deployment of AI solutions without an in-house team of specialized AI talent, allowing any organization to unlock the value of AI "fast and fuss-free." With $108 million in investor funding led by SoftBank, Petuum is one of the highest-funded Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning startups. Petuum enables and orchestrates AI for enterprise with our software platform as well as vertical industry solutions. Our AI platform allows enterprises to design, build, experiment, customize, operate and own vertical AI solutions in a wide range of industries and areas. Our vertical industry solutions provide end-to-end AI functions for a variety of industry verticals, starting with Healthcare and Manufacturing / IoT

Best Tech Work Culture (Philadelphia) | ShopRunner creates an environment for employees to grow, learn and collaborate with team members. The culture is centered on seven core values: boldness, inclusion, grit, candor, accountability, spirit and hustle. The company believes great ideas should not solely come from senior leadership but from employees at any level.

Best Tech Work Culture (Philadelphia) | As an experience design firm, Think Company works hard to design a great employee experience and overall culture for everyone on the team—including their technology discipline. Their Technology leaders intentionally address creativity, innovation, learning, and rewarding a job well done among other initiatives.

Best Work Culture (Orange County) | As media consumption shifts from traditional linear viewing to a premium, on-demand experience, our users' appetites for a fast and innovative platform continually increases. We incentivize our teams to stay cutting edge and stay up to par with the big players in the game like Netflix and Hulu. Our teams are incentivized with company-sponsored team events like mixers and team-building events. We also celebrate large launches with company-sponsored meals. Our culture has always been very flexible in terms of hours of operation and vacation which has naturally incentivized the team produce when it works for them.

Best Tech Manager (Philadelphia) | Neil is by far beyond deserving of this recognition within the local industry and community. He creates careers. He creates amazing teams. He creates innovators. There are few people that do as much as him in the capacity of a manager and an all-around industry-leader.

Best Tech Work Culture (Washington DC) | Whereoware employees are “geek chic” – combining nerd smarts and style into every design, development, and marketing project. It’s a fitting tagline. We’re playful and creative, and we get killer results. Being geek chic is simply celebrating whatever weird and wonderful hobbies, talents, and experiences make each employee unique. We’ve incorporated this mindset into our brand, company culture, and marketing initiatives.

Best Tech Work Culture (Philadelphia) | FreedomPay not only fosters collaboration and learning internally but encourages employees to stay ahead of the curve on industry best practices and market trends. Employees can attend workshops and continuing education classes as well as attain the latest technology and certifications. FreedomPay acts on the mentality that they are always learning and growing so they can be the best for their clients. The company has the utmost respect and appreciation for their employees and treats them as such.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley) | Oath’s work through ERGs, human resources, recruiting, employee experience teams, and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion is delivering on Oath’s commitment to inclusion and the goal of making Oath a great place to work for everyone—including those with seen and unseen disabilities. We recognize we can only build quality technology if we have a diverse perspective in our workplace. Thus, Oath initiated the D, is a dedicated team focused on diverse recruitment and prioritize business organizations that fall below our hiring targets.For example, Oath publicly committed to 50/50 gender equality at the top 4 levels of Oath by 2020, and since Oath’s formation in 2017 to the present, eight of the past 12 VP and above hires have been women.

Best Tech Startup (NYC) |In a a matter of months, Timehop has leveraged a social media platform into a world-class ad tech product - Nimbus - that performs better than most of its competitors. The team created a Supply-Side Platform to deliver quality advertising content to mobile publishers at a value greater than anything in the marketplace.

Best Tech Manager (Toronto) | Debbie Gamble, VP of Digital Products and Platforms at Interac, has made a significant impact on the fintech industry, and her work has not gone unnoticed. In 2018, she was named one of the Most Influential Women in Payments, earned the ACT Canada Champion’s Award, and at the time of this submission, is shortlisted for the Distinguished Payments Professional award by Women in Payments, accolades she deserves, but never asks for. Instead of vying for recognition, she works vigorously, championing innovative digital solutions alongside the award-winning team she has built. She inspires the creation and growth of products that impact millions of Canadians every day.

Best Tech Work Culture (Silicon Valley) | Velodyne LiDAR provides extensive training programs to our employees so they can always be on top of their game in LiDAR technology and our products. We also provide training for the engineers of the future at different organizations such as SAE International and RoboNation. We have an annual picnic for the whole company and their families, surprise ice-cream events, and Wednesday coffee vans. There is always something happening each week to celebrate how much we appreciate each and every one of our employees. Velodyne LiDAR knows that the marketplace needs innovative LiDAR sensors. For more than a decade, we have designed and produced a wide range of LiDAR sensors, including the Puck, Ultra Puck and VLS-128. These rely on a 3D vision system that uses lasers to fully ‘see’ the surrounding environment. To date, the company’s sensors have been installed in thousands of autonomous vehicles around the world, traveling millions of real-world miles. LiDAR sensors are the eyes for automation – and we invented them.

Best Tech Startup (Chicago) | RhinoDox is a cloud-based, end-to-end Intelligent Content Management platform for Manufacturing companies aimed at helping front-and-mid-office teams move content into a digital world so that it is safely stored, easily found and quickly integrated into their daily processes. We focus on reducing the time these teams spend searching for and finding documents so they can spend more time growing revenue.

Best Tech Work Culture (Orange County) | The Vincit culture is driven by two things: happiness of employees and happiness of clients. By creating an environment where “Mondays don’t suck” and acting with the philosophy “do as you would” the employees have the power to make decisions regarding their work and are happier because of it. They empower employees to work with autonomy and flexibility while being supported by the company with the concept of Leadership as a Service.

Best Tech Startup (Silicon Valley) |Founded as a resource to help working mothers achieve work-life balance, Zūm was born out of an idea for better, more equitable future. Zūm’s CEO and co-founder, Ritu Narayan, is a working mother herself and faced a choice after moving to Silicon Valley: she juggled caring for her family and working a demanding career managing $1billion+ of eCommerce at eBay. Rather than sacrifice quality work or family time, Ritu founded a company to solve a major childcare issue parents face: safe, reliable transportation. Together, Ritu and her employees are on a mission to improve the lives of busy working moms through social innovation, transportation expertise and technology. Not only are they helping women (and men, too) safely and efficiently get their children from various places throughout the day, they are empowering parents to achieve their professional and personal goals while creating a wonderful life for their families. Not only does Zūm’s leadership team and employees have one foot in the future, but the company also employs forward-thinking drivers, or Zūmers. It’s creating jobs for parents and other professionals, like teachers, nurses, etc., who want a flexible schedule and to earn extra income. Ritu’s mission-based company is helping parents pursue their passions while keeping their kids engaged and is also offering unique and flexible career opportunities for people around the country. Finally, the service inspires a sense of independence for the children who use it, and helps them to pursue extracurricular opportunities that may have not been previously available due to logistics. In effect, Zūm is fostering the next generation of forward-thinking leaders as well.

Best Tech Manager (San Francisco) | Christina's main focus is on promoting the careers of her team and inspiring innovation (with the make it happen spirit). She is dedicated to the success of our team but through the lens of the individual's growth which enables a collaborative and supportive team culture.

Best Tech Startup (NYC) | After uncovering a need for mobile workers that lies between crammed coffee shops and the sky-high price tag associated with big name co-working giants, KettleSpace leverages underutilized hospitality space in the NYC market, KettleSpace by providing affordable membership-based workspace solutions for freelancers, creatives, and budding entrepreneurs, while providing a new, profit-rich revenue stream to restaurant owners and leading hospitality partners.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) |AgilityIO has expert knowledge of the latest design tools and keeps up-to-date on the latest social impact news from around the globe. Through Slack, AgilityIO shares new products and tools with each other that might streamline their workflow. For each client, they host an individual, innovative product discovery workshop to develop the MVP. Through market research and defining the end goal, AgilityIO has been able to find that niche market that will push a successful product launch.

Best Tech Startup (Chicago) | ProxyPics is the first of its kind technology in the world of real estate. Users are allowed to request a photo of a specific location, for other users to complete, for a small fee. Think of it as Uber for photos. It is not only revolutionizing the world of real estate, but people’s personal lives as well.

Best Tech Startup (Philadelphia) | Everyone at MilkCrate is dedicated to advancing our clients' missions by building them incredible engaging mobile apps within their budget. Our company has grown from an early stage startup by seeking out ways to be more impactful and better serve customers - all while building a team and company culture where learning and impact are valued above all.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley) | As our recruiting leader I encourage my team of 5 recruiters to pay special attention to diverse candidates and minorities. We are a diverse recruiting team ourselves, and are proud of diversity statistics. Individual Contributors - Male 57% Female 43% and Management - Male 53% Female 47% We have won awards - Comparably’s “Most Diverse” and #3 “Best Company to Work” 2018 - based on surveys of our employees. 4.7/5 rating on Glassdoor.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Toronto) | We have built a diverse and inclusive team that has shaped the foundation of our company and culture from our very core throughout our entire organization. Diversity at Betterez represents diversity of thought, cultural background and abilities. We speak nearly 10 languages and strive to attract talented people from diverse backgrounds during our hiring process; people who represent the vast clientele that we have from around the world. Together, our employees are building and shaping the foundational core of our business through their own perspectives.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley) | Sauce Labs believes that diversity and inclusion are central to a performant and healthy organizational culture. We welcome differences and embrace individuality. We are committed to a culture that not only allows our team members to be who they are, but one that also celebrates them.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley) | Rubrik implements diverse hiring practices by allowing managers to design their own hiring processes that best suit the teams' needs. Rubrik promotes collaboration and diverse thinking to produce and innovative product by allowing teams to explore different processes that best suit the problems they are trying to solve.

Best Tech Work Culture (Philadelphia) | Some might describe the GrayHair culture as “quirky”, and they would still take that as the highest compliment! They are allergic to corporate bureaucracy, and are not afraid to work hard, play hard and fall hard, then get back up again and have a few good laughs along the way.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) | Beyond understands that successful teams are based on diverse people with different backgrounds, collaborating in safe and positive environments. Beyond organizes into cross-functional teams allowing the tech team to be involved far earlier, learn from others and help influence the direction of their projects.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (San Francisco) |One of MyVest’s key tenets is “People Matter,” something they take very seriously. MyVestors, as they affectionately refer to their team members, are so much more than just organizational resources — they’re an indispensable part of their success. And they are incredibly proud of the “virtuous cycle” they have created here at MyVest, in which their naturally diverse workforce continually attracts an equally diverse talent pool.

Best Tech Work Culture (Boston) | Inside of Tamr, CEO, Andy Palmer, has a simple philosophy for ensuring that the organization is strong enough to sustain innovation over time: “happy people, healthy company,” where personal and professional development are held with equally high regard.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | Collage was founded in 2016 and has grown into a creative and hardworking company with a loyal, engaged. As a proudly Canadian company, Collage is uniquely positioned to help the underserved Canadian SMB market with nationwide payroll and benefits integrations and affordable pricing for companies from 3 to 150+ employees. Through the many challenges of growing a startup, Collage’s founders have consistently shared their vision and helped each employee understand their place in the company’s future. As a result, the half of our employees have been with the company since its first very first year.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | botkeeper offers a breakthrough solution to an age-old problem by automating bookkeeping tasks. The result: Round-the-clock and virtual accounting services for half the cost.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | DarwinAI is one of the leading Artificial Intelligence startups in Canada. Founded by leading academics at the University of Waterloo, our technology leverages AI itself to generate highly optimized deep neural networks without sacrificing functional accuracy. Moreover, this IP enables ‘explainable’ deep learning – the ability to understand why a neural network reaches the conclusions it does (critical in highly regulated industries).

Best Tech Startup (Chicago) | After becoming the 2009 Northwestern University Venture Challenge champion, NuCurrent has gone on to change the way that people interact with electronics (e.g. mobile phones, wearables, IoT, cars), by removing the power cord. As engineers and product managers look to build in wireless power capabilities into their products (from mobile phones, wearables, IoT to cars), they’re continuing to turn to NuCurrent because we provide certainty and clarity on getting their products to market with superior wireless power performance, faster time-to-market, and cost-effectively. We not only help customers get their wireless power-enabled products to market quickly but win in their markets by giving them a competitive advantage in wireless power.

Best Tech Manager (Orange County) | Travis promotes career growth in his employees while also looking to help aspiring talent in other teams. He leads by example in creating and maintaining a team culture of execution and team spirit. At the same time, he drives both technical and process innovation. Through it all, Travis clearly communicates, reinforces, and executes the vision with his employees and with other functions.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | Vena Solutions was founded 7 years ago by 3 guys in a coffee shop who recognized that Excel was pervasively used by medium and large businesses to do financial planning and analysis but had severe limitations when it came to collaboration, data integrity, auditability and the data volumes large companies generate. The initial product prototype connected Excel to a database in the cloud so that Excel becomes a window onto your financial data but the data is securely stored online

Best Tech Work Culture (Los Angeles) | We pride ourselves on harnessing our deep entrepreneurial backgrounds to create incredible new businesses with big corporations, so our culture of creativity and innovation is critical to our success.

Best Tech Startup (NYC) | Before goodLinc, nonprofits usually renewed product and service contracts without performing adequate due diligence to ensure they had the best value for their needs. goodLinc built a no cost, supportive bridge connecting nonprofit organizations and businesses that serve the sector. Free memberships are provided to support sustainability and financial health of the nonprofit community. Members are encouraged to build connections and engage with others to collaborate, share ideas and best practices.

Best Work Culture (Orange County) | We encourage our team members to step away from their everyday work mindset and refresh and recharge by focusing on others in the community Collaboration and team building are promoted through our participation in various community service projects and fundraisers such as Habitat for Humanity and the American Cancer Society (ACS). Each office has an allocated budget and "fun committee" to plan monthly events and activities with their office coworkers and visiting remote team members.

Best Tech Manager (Philadelphia) | James empowers the team by allowing people to make decisions, not micromanaging, and encouraging people to do their best. Collaboration is also encouraged. James speaks to each person regularly, to check on project and personal progress. He publicly expresses confidence in individual team members. Between regular team meetings and team events, James ensures that the team embraces collaboration on a regular basis.

Best Tech Manager (Toronto) | Steph Director, UI/UX at Coinsquare provides autonomy to her team by holding team bonding meals/exercises/get-togethers, where growth is discussed with external mentors as well as herself. She provides lunch and learns and open dialogue. Steph supports the teams ideas, test pilots them, and frequently encouragers new ideas. She fosters a culture of bringing new ideas to the table, failing quick and iterating to inspire innovation.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) | Jakt is a digital product and innovation studio dedicated to making a positive impact in the world. They aim to affect the lives of 100 million people by 2027 through the innovative digital products they create. Jakt wants all employees to be proud of where they work, so our focus on positive impact flows into our everyday company culture.

Best Tech Startup (Orange County) | CPI establishes a suite of security program development tools with a focus on progress over legacy compliance-based approaches that cause most organization to struggle. This solution provides a free cyber security score along with tools and resources for organizations to quickly improve their security program health. Unlike other cyber security score providers, CPI focuses on building security programs that can move forward.

Best Tech Startup (Orange County) | METAseismic created a new class of honeycomb-type materials to protect objects from the seismic vibration, make the civil infrastructure more resilient to earthquakes, and ultimately save lives. The extensive application of this disruptive technology can tremendously increase the resiliency of communities in areas prone to earthquakes and reduce construction costs and direct and indirect losses after a seismic event.

Best Tech Startup (Philadelphia) | In less than 4 years and with fewer than 40 employees, HealthVerity has demonstrated its success by deploying its platform in 17 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, 3 of the top 5 insurance payers and 4 of the top 5 strategy consulting firms. Their blue chip clientele confirms that HealthVerity is taking the market by storm by delivering a differentiated and highly valued solution.

Best Tech Startup (Washington DC) | MetiStream is passionate about innovation and creativity and is always pushing the boundaries of technology. As a healthcare analytics company using the bleeding edge of AI and ML techniques, we help healthcare organizations maximize the use of their data assets to improve patient outcomes, decrease risks and accelerate healthcare discoveries. Through our product, Ember, we can integrate all healthcare data types, from clinical, claims, and genomics, and provide end-to-end search, analysis, and prediction. Deeply engaged and connected with the big data community, we are also the Founders and organizers of the Washington DC Area Apache Spark Interactive and AI and Big Data Healthcare Meetups with ~5000 members.

Best Tech Work Culture (Philadelphia) | O3 promotes technical creativity by sending employees to local and national conferences and have recently hosted their own internal Design Slam. One of the ways the company promotes innovation is through their labs program, where they brainstorm to create internal projects and actually create them to show clients the possibilities in emerging tech.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Chicago) | Noirefy’s mission is to connect ethnically diverse professionals, specifically from underrepresented backgrounds, directly to established professionals as well as employee-seeking companies. As a company that's sole mission to expand diversity in companies, she undoubtedly implements diverse practices within her own company. As an overall voice for diversity in the industry (as echoed in the Chicago Tribune, Windy City Live, Marie Claire, etc.) Shaniqua and Noirefy are continually promoting collaboration, and diverse thinking and Noirefy itself is a resource to explore diverse talents.

Best Tech Startup (Orange County) | Blast makes hard things easy and boring things fun by helping gamers micro-earn and micro-save money in the background of their favorite games. Blast has brought the gaming community closer to the company's goal of educating and accelerating savings for everyone – simply by doing what they already love to do! Blast’s goal is to make savings so exciting and rewarding that more people will be encouraged to start saving early.

Best Tech Manager (NYC) | When thinking about organizational personality, Randy Jimenez possesses a rare willingness and push towards diversity and collaboration that comes from the top down. As the CTO and Co-Founder at Ollie, Randy Jimenez seems similar to most developers who you’d met – and while he doesn't like to be in the spotlight, is deserving of a platform to brag about the amazing tech team he's built.

Best Tech Manager (Chicago) | ShopRunner’s Chief Technology Officer, Greg Ball, is an accessible, supportive and forward-thinking leader. Under his leadership, Ball’s team transforms raw data into a value proposition tool that helps retail partners strengthen their business strategies and compete in the marketplace. This aspect is unique to ShopRunner as other ecommerce players typically withhold this type of data from partners. Ball’s work positions ShopRunner as an appealing partner to retailers and contributes significantly to the company’s growth.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | GreatHorn protects businesses using ubiquitous cloud email platforms from today’s sophisticated email threats by automating detection, remediation, and post-delivery incident response.

Best Tech Work Culture (San Francisco) |As a core part of our culture, we emphasize seeking opportunities to advance our technical infrastructure for continuous innovation. This includes upgrading existing framework, adding new tools, or redesigning a module or component for better performance and scale.