Oregon Entrepreneurs Network Announces Game Changer Finalists for the 2017 OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards


Share this article! The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) is pleased to announce four finalists for the 2017 OEN Tom Holce Game Changer Award. The OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards honor the skill and the courage that it takes for entrepreneurs to create a business out of an idea. The event is intended to not only celebrate entrepreneurs, … Read more

The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) is pleased to announce four finalists for the 2017 OEN Tom Holce Game Changer Award.

The OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards honor the skill and the courage that it takes for entrepreneurs to create a business out of an idea. The event is intended to not only celebrate entrepreneurs, but to highlight their importance to the region’s economy.

The winner will be determined by an audience vote, with input from the OEN judging committee, on October 25, 2017 during OEN’s Awards Dinner at the Oregon Convention Center.  In addition to the finalists below, OEN will be honoring a game-changing social enterprise for our Game Changer Award and a young, up-and-coming entrepreneur for our Wyatt Starnes Battle of the Schools Award.

Our Game Changer Award honors both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises that offer a novel solution to a social problem. The finalist companies all have a commitment to impact that is central to the mission of the business, a viable business model, and a compelling answer to the question, “Why is your solution better than existing solutions?”
The finalists are:

    •    Cascade Health Alliance – Cascade Health Alliance (CHA) is a coordinated care organization (CCO) in Klamath County. A CCO brings together many types of doctors and other health care providers. We all work together to serve people with health insurance from the Oregon Health Plan (OHP). CHA and other CCOs were made to change how people receive care. We focus on prevention and care for long-term problems like diabetes and asthma. We help care providers talk to each other and share important health information. We support our members to make healthy choices, reducing healthcare costs and avoidable emergency room visits.

    •    GO Box – In downtown Portland alone, food cart customers use and throw away about 60,000 disposable containers every month. Every day in the U.S., millions of people get meals “to go” in single-use disposable clamshells or boxes. These containers require resources to produce, are used for a very short amount of time and then end their short lives filling up landfills. GO Box offers customers a way to get their meal in an environmentally friendly, reusable alternative to the single-use disposable container. With a mission of “doing away with throw away,” GO Box makes sustainable eating fast, easy, and convenient for people who eat on the go.

    •    Good Clean Love – Good Clean Love is a woman owned, B-Corporation that is revolutionizing the sexual health and wellness industry. The sexual health product industry has been largely controlled by a handful of large CPG companies that have not invested in any innovative product development or formulations for 40 years. Good Clean Love has been a primary disruptor in this space for the past six years, first leading in organic and now leading in patented, scientific advances and testing. Good Clean Love is widely recognized as the leader in product innovation, which is why we have become the go-to private label source for many young millennial founders of feminine hygiene and sexual health product lines.

    •    Wild Me – At Wild Me, high technology and citizen science are telling the amazing stories of animals’ lives. Wildlife research in the 21st century will be an amazing blend of drones with advanced computer vision, massive data collection by citizen scientists, and the integration of artificial intelligence to help make sense of it all. We are starting to have unprecedented insight into the complex and rich lives of the wildlife we study. Through advanced computing, we’re bringing their stories to you.

Learn more about OEN’s 2017 Awards Dinner at: http://awards.oen.org/2017

 

About Oregon Entrepreneurs Network: A nonprofit, membership-driven organization with a 25+-year track record, OEN connects entrepreneurs to a network of peers and mentors, startup funding opportunities, and hands-on training. OEN believes that a thriving network of entrepreneurs makes Oregon stronger.