Stay Work Play Leadership Award
The Stay Work Play Leadership Award honored an individual or organization in NH that demonstrates dedicated support for efforts that enhance the recruitment and retention of young workers in the state. This award was designed to recognize ideas that have been put in place within an organization (association, company, nonprofit, etc). The idea(s) have a direct and positive impact on younger workers in NH, create an incentive for them to remain here, create greater awareness of what living in NH can mean to them in terms of quality of life or opportunities, and demonstrate innovation and leadership.
Dynamic Network Services, Inc. (Dyn)
Manchester
2012 Winner
The 2012 Stay Work Play Leadership Award winner doesn’t just promote a creative culture for its employees, it embodies it. It supports an entrepreneurial spirit in the community and among employees, allowing its workers to spend 10 percent of their time on any project they’d like. The idea behind that is to encourage innovation. Everything Dyn does is done to foster collaboration and a holistic view of the world from its unique floor plan to hiring a chef to prepare meals for employees’ onsite. And it seems to be working. This internet infrastructure company continues to grow exponentially.
2011 Winner
Fidelity is a leader in promoting workforce development initiatives in the Granite State. When Stephen Reno, then chancellor of the University System of NH and now executive director of Leadership NH, proposed the 55% Initiative—an effort to keep 55 percent of graduates from NH’s colleges and universities in the state post-graduation—Fidelity recognized the value of the initiative and became a supporter. In fact, Fidelity ultimately became one of five charter partners of Stay Work Play NH.
Fidelity Investments
Merrimack
The Founders of the Manchester Young Professionals Network
Manchester
2010 Winner
The winners of the 2010 award say their idea began in 2004. Eleven young professionals got together over drinks. What came out of that evening was the launch of New Hampshire’s first young professionals organization in the state’s largest city. Those eleven founded the Manchester Young Professionals Network, which set in motion a revolution that would lead to nine young professional networks with more than 8,000 members statewide a mere six years later. The founding members both then and now are as diverse as today’s young professionals—single, married, parents, both business owners and managers—but the one thing they share is a desire to connect with other young professionals to better themselves and the state.