When it comes to cities that have thriving tech communities, Chicago is truly the “second city” to none. Employing over 100,000 people, the IT industry has boomed over the last decade, growing 18% compared to the overall economy, which stayed essentially flat at 1%.
The reason for this growth is as varied as the Chicago weather. Some of the biggest tech companies like Google and Motorola Solutions continue to grow their investments in the Windy City, with Motorola basing its headquarters in downtown Chicago. Meanwhile, some of the most successful startups in recent years were founded in the city, with Groupon, Cameo, and SpotHero getting their start in Chicago.
“The Chicago technology scene is truly special,” said Max Gerdes, Executive Director of the Chicago Office at Motion Recruitment. “It continues to establish itself as a hub for so many organizations, ranging from your early stage startups to large established organizations, due to some of the top engineering schools in the country surrounding the city, some of the best tech incubators & accelerators, and top places to work in just about every industry you can think of. Truly setting itself up to attract the best talent and maintain a strong foundation of an engineering workforce.”
With everything going for it, it’s no wonder why Chicago led with the highest amount of Timmy Finalists. These great tech companies and managers will be reviewed by our panel of 2024 Timmy Judges and compete with businesses and leaders from across the US and Canada to decide which will be able to call themselves North American Timmy Award Winners.
While seven Timmy Award categories are decided by our expert panel of judges, one will be decided by you! The Community Choice Timmy Award will be given via popular vote. You have till August 15th to vote for your favorite tech company or manager, make your voice heard today!
Now, let's take a look at all of Chicago’s Timmy Award Finalists:
2024 Timmy Award Finalists, The Best in Tech in Chicago
Evention LLC, Best Tech Work Culture - Small / Midsize Employer
Twenty years since it began, Evention LLC has continued its commitment to innovation, creativity, and nurturing the employee experience. Evention has created and expanded its inclusivity and wellness programs to support a period of rapid growth for the company and its employees, creating opportunities for employees to practice mindfulness in the office, build their cultural awareness, and foster an environment of inclusivity and purpose. Evention’s leadership team most recently did a full top-down reassessment of its company structure to analyze its legacy models of leadership and to redevelop its leadership approach to best serve employees. Across two decades, Evention has proudly placed its employees first in its day-to-day operations and has continued to explore new ways to create a culture of collaboration, open-mindedness, and success.
Clarity Partners, LLC, Best Tech Workplace for Diversity
As a minority-owned business, Clarity makes the conscious decision to acquire and maintain a diverse workforce, and leveraging those diverse perspectives is one of the core values of their business. Now more than ever, in a post-COVID working world and among the general social unrest within our society, Clarity finds it fundamentally important to continually reflect on how they operate, how they keep their employees and families safe, and on their advocacy for marginalized groups. In addition to increasing the efforts of their internal philanthropic organization, Clarity Cares, they have created an additional social justice task force and have conducted diversity and inclusion training for their employees.
Hardi Gokani | W.W.Grainger, Best Tech Manager
Hardi always has well-defined expectations and a sense of purpose and direction, and she motivates her subordinates to feel invested in their work and excel in their tasks. She has always encouraged team development, collaboration, sharing ideas and supporting one another which has helped the team to build trust and drive innovation leading to better outcomes and success. Hardi has defined her vision concisely and clearly and has a roadmap to define the strategy to show how the product vision will be realized over time.
AMOpportunities, Best Tech for Good and Tech Team of the Year
AMOpportunites disrupted the healthcare education field when it introduced its software, a marketplace of available clinical training sites that provides schools and students with on-demand access to clinical training and supports physicians’ administrative workloads around teaching. The software's aim is to centralize the processes behind clinical teaching to foster a more collaborative relationship between schools, students and clinicians.
Discovery Education, Best Remote Tech Work Culture
Creating effective channels of communication within and between teams is a challenge most digital workplaces face. However, Discovery Education overcomes this deftly by leveraging communication and project management tools such as Slack, Zoom and Jira. The company’s Slack channels are thoughtfully organized and serve a wide range of purposes. From groups built for specific projects to ones about pets to ones celebrating the various accomplishments of peers, DE provides digital watering holes for a plethora of community needs. Slack huddles or Zoom meetings are also commonplace at DE, allowing employees to freely communicate ideas and clarify issues when communicating through text is not clear enough. Lastly, the company’s usage of organizational tools like Jira and Confluence makes working remotely very straightforward. DE’s taxonomy of projects and tasks on these platforms makes it easy to manage one’s time and workload each sprint, a quality especially important when not in an office.
Bloom, Best Remote Tech Work Culture and Best Tech for Good
Bloom is not just a company; it's a force for good, leveraging technology to make a meaningful impact in the lives of seniors and communities worldwide. Their commitment to driving positive change extends beyond their virtual walls, as we work hand in hand with their employees to make a difference in their local communities in and outside of Bloomington, Indiana. Through thoughtful collaborations and partnerships with organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Pets for Seniors, Meals on Wheels, and local long-term care centers, Bloom takes a 360-degree view to help seniors thrive.
Made in Tandem, Best Remote Tech Work Culture
As a remote company, Made in Tandem keeps its culture strong with several strategies and initiatives, mainly through intentional, prioritized standing gatherings.
Every day, Made in Tandem comes together for a company-wide touch-base called Lightning Round, which helps them stay connected (and is a great opportunity to see all the Made in Tandem pets!). Everyone gives an update, whether it’s what they’re working on that day, asking for help with something, praising a team member, or sharing their weekend plans. Every week they also host Tandem Thursdays, a companywide get-together where anyone can present on a topic they’re passionate about, work-related or not. Recent presentations include a recap of a trip to Italy, an Apple Vision Pro demo, and a workshop on communication.
Fingerprint, Best Remote Tech Work Culture
Fingerprint is a 100% remote global company that has built a thriving, inclusive culture for its distributed workforce in over 25 countries. As a fast-growing startup that’s welcomed 127 new employees since 2022, Fingerprint implemented several strategies and initiatives to ensure its remote team feels connected, supported, and empowered to do their best work.
SpotHero, Best Tech Work Culture - Small / Midsize Employer and Best Tech Workplace for Diversity
SpotHero fosters a culture of innovation and creativity by encouraging team members to think outside the box and contribute their ideas, with the understanding that colleagues will collaboratively explore their potential. This empowered environment ensures that ideas are never shelved due to fear. Additionally, several practices reinforce this approach and help create space for continued curiosity and collaboration. One example is the Engineering team's retrospective sessions, where they discuss projects, successes, shortcomings, and the reasons behind them. These sessions provide a valuable platform to analyze decisions, explore new solutions based on learning, and document mistakes for collective improvement.
Brian Suarez | SpotHero, Best Tech Manager
Brian recognizes the value of diverse experiences within IT and understands when those experiences may lead team members to new opportunities. He identified a team member's desire to gain expertise in development tools, a domain handled by a different squad. Brian proactively collaborated with this person and the new team lead to create a development plan. This facilitated their involvement in the development tools squad, allowing him to acquire new processes, expand his skillset, and transition into the new role as a systems engineer.
Evive Health, Best Tech for Good
Evive was founded 17+ years ago on a mission to leverage technology, predictive analytics, and big data to make benefits easier to understand and utilize, improving the overall well-being of all employees and ultimately driving overall engagement. Today, they've turned that vision into reality, continuing to innovate and empower millions of employees to take full advantage of their benefits and improve their physical, emotional, and financial health.
Q-Centrix, Best Tech for Good, and Best Tech Work Culture – Large Employer
Q-Centrix originated in 2010 as a remote clinical team, establishing its foundation on robust interpersonal connections despite geographical distances. Motivated by a collective desire to positively impact a wide spectrum of patients, our workforce exemplified a dedication to fostering meaningful relationships. Over the years, they have preserved this fundamental ethos while integrating additional values and principles that reflect their organization’s evolution and growth and further enrich our culture. These include perpetual learning, courageous innovation, quality improvement, empowered accountability, and meaningful collaboration.
Simplex Trading, Best Tech Work Culture - Small / Midsize Employer
Simplex Trading stands apart as a hub of innovation and inclusivity. At the core of their ethos lies a deep commitment to fostering a workplace environment where creativity thrives, and each voice is valued. Simplex Trading prioritizes continuous learning and professional growth, offering extensive opportunities for skill development and advancement through its Tuition Reimbursement program. Their culture celebrates diversity of backgrounds and encourages collaboration, recognizing that diverse perspectives fuel innovation. This commitment to their employees is realized through high retention rates.
Rocket Travel by Agoda, Best Tech Work Culture - Small / Midsize Employer
Rocket Travel by Agoda offers multiple learning and development benefits. One unique benefit they offer is called Agoda Choice, where after a 1-year anniversary at Rocket Travel by Agoda, employees are eligible for a $1500 credit that can be used towards things like professional certificates, developmental conferences and more. They offer LinkedIn Learning to all employees as a tool where teams can learn new technical topics on the job. They also have an L&D team that have annual trainings around developing soft skills. The most recent training was for managers and how to have difficult conversations. Lastly, they have an in-house enterprise-grade ChatGPT4 tool which is great for professional tech development.
Clinical Data Warehouse Architecture Team | Q-Centrix, Tech Team of the Year
This team was specifically created to build their vision of organizing and structuring the clinical data of our hospital partners to enable medical research and deep analytics. The team represents diverse backgrounds and skills, combining skilled technical people hired directly for the project with long-tenured subject matter experts at the company. The team has successfully taken abstracted clinical data that was designed for a single purpose and transformed it into a normalized and limitless data resource that enables HIPAA-compliant access to life-saving studies through the Q-Centrix Research Network.
Janet Beagley | Q- Centrix, Best Tech Manager
Janet recognizes the importance of fostering a growth mindset within her team. She equips them with opportunities to learn and take on new challenges, expanding their skillsets and knowledge of the company's data tech stack. This not only empowers individuals but also strengthens the team's overall technical expertise. She is dedicated to team member development and has created new roles with well-defined responsibilities giving team members opportunities for meaningful growth.
Sezzle, Best Tech Startup
Sezzle stands as a beacon of innovation in the fintech landscape, redefining the way consumers access financial services through their revolutionary Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platform. Their commitment to innovation, agility, and resilience has propelled them to the forefront of the industry, driving meaningful impact and empowering millions of users to take control of their financial futures.
Seth Gagnon | Evernorth Health Services, Best Tech Manager
Seth Gagnon consistently promotes career growth by providing tailored mentorship and professional development opportunities for each team member. He guides his team to "dive deep, expand wide" on all action items. He regularly holds one-on-one meetings to discuss career aspirations and offer constructive feedback on recent works. Seth encourages continuous learning by sharing conference invitations and course training.
Find out if any of these great Chicago finalists become North American Timmy Award winners later this fall and don’t forget to vote for your favorite Chicago tech companies and managers once a day through August 15th to help them win the Community Choice Award!