BCNA’s 2013 IHW Awards Focussed on Success

BCNA’s 2013 IHW Awards Focussed on Success

BCNA’s Third Annual Immigrant Heritage Week Awards event took place on Monday and it was so exciting to see so many friends, clients, partners, and community members in attendance.

First up on the program was the presentation of the awards themselves, which recognize both clients who represent the spirit of immigrant initiative as well as partners who have made tremendous contributions to the New York Immigrant Community. We were very pleased and lucky that the Deputy Commissioner and Legal Counsel for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs – Matilde Roman –  was able to join us this year to present the following awards:

  • The 2013 Boot Strap Entrepreneur Award went to Abou Dia, CEO and Founder of Kinxtel Corporation, a telecommunications company based in New York. Mr. Dia is a serial entrepreneur and expert marketer with a record of founding and building startups, brick and mortat as well as in the marketing space.
  • The 2013 Jobs Creation Award went to Michael Danielov, a Russian immigrant who created 8 new NYC jobs this year and continues to grow his business, BIONOVA Inc., which produces skincare products. His daughter, Nana Danielov, accepted the award on his behalf.
  • The 2013 New Beginning Award was presented to Samal Nur and to Abdul Diallo,  who both participated in BCNA’s IDA program, which is funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
  • The 2013 Corporate Leadership Award went to Citi Community Development, which has been an enthusiastic and generous supporter of the BCNA Microenterprise Program since 1998. Accepting the award was Jill Kelly, the Deputy Regional Director, New York & Connecticut Region.

Next up was a panel discussion on how business owners can use mobile technology to expand their client base and create more opportunities for their businesses. 

Our distinguished panelists included Thomas Ko, head of mobile product strategy and development for Citi Transaction Services (CTS) and Citi’s global corporate mobile banking solution, CitiDirect BE Mobile; Deepti Sharma Kapur, CEO of FoodToEat.com, who was recognized recently by Fortune Magazine as one of 30 under 30 to watch in the food and wine sector; Yevgeniy Mordkovich, an entrepreneur who is the Founder of an electric bicycle startup, EVELO; Kristin McDonough, Director of the NY Public Library for Science, Industry, and Business and Foulis Peacock, founder of Immpreneur.com, who moderated.

Deepti Kapur spoke about her efforts to educate food cart vendors on how to use their smart phones to manage their businesses, noting that “speed is important and mobile technology allows that.”

Yevgeniy Mordkovich described how EVELO, by using social media to build a community of bicycle enthusiasts, brings the company to the attention of potential clients.

Kristin McDonough shared information about the vast range of free resources for entrepreneurs at the Business Library.

And Thomas Ko gave excellent examples of how mobile technology enables entrepreneurs to expand the ways their business can service their customers, urging the enthusiastic audience to “embrace who you are as an immigrant, you bring value.”

After the panel discussion we shared the preliminary results of our ground-breaking survey on smart-phone adoption and use among immigrant
entrepreneurs. More on that later!And finally we would like to thank our clients, who displayed their work, and our partners who provided the excellent breakfast, for making the networking area such a lively and welcoming environment.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to making the event a big success and we look forward to our 4th Annual awards next year!