Lifetime Achievement Award finalists: 

• Luella Chavez D’Angelo, Western Union Foundation
• Dana Crawford, Urban Neighborhoods
• Melissa Edelman, Wealth Concepts, LLC/MassMutual
• Kathryn Paul, Delta Dental of Colorado

Young Professional of the Year Award finalists: 

• Laura Roberts, Xcel Energy
• Gloria Schoch, First Data & the First Data Foundation
• Shelley Thompson, Allen & Vellone P.C.
• Kara Veitch, Isaacson Rosenbaum P.C.

CWCC Company of the Year Award finalists:

• Large Company – Qwest Communications
• Large Company - Xcel Energy, Inc.
• Medium Company - Delta Dental of Colorado
• Medium Company – The Integer Group
• Small Company – GlobaLinks Learning Abroad
• Small Company - SalesLeadership, Inc.

About the Awards:

Young Professionals Award
The Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce Young Professional Award recognizes the efforts of an outstanding Colorado young professional woman who demonstrates significant accomplishments in her career and has contributed to the business community.  This emerging leader pursues excellence and possesses leadership qualities, creativity, and demonstrates role model qualities.  Additionally, she works to improve the quality of life of others through community service. To be eligible, a candidate must be a professional woman working in Colorado and must be 39 years of age or younger.

Lifetime Achievement Award
To be eligible, the nominee must:

• Be a member of the community for a minimum of five years.
• Show significant leadership and made an impact on women in her community.
• Demonstrate integrity.
• Contributed a body of work that has made an effective change in a specific segment of her community including: Environmental, Community, Business, Social

CWCC COMPANY OF THE YEAR Awards

The CWCC COMPANY OF THE YEAR Awards honor companies that create a workplace culture that supports the highest levels of personal and professional accomplishment for their employees who are women by: encouraging them to excel in the company, devote time and energy to their community in a meaningful way, and forge paths of leadership for other women to follow. CWCC Company of the Year strives toward these efforts to create balance in their leadership teams. COMPANY OF THE YEAR Recipients must meet each of the following criteria: Size Criteria: Large Business: 600+ employees / Medium Business: 51-600 employees / Small Business: 50 employees or less; Assist women in reaching their full leadership potential, through training, promotion, or programs specifically directed to support women employees; Contract with women owned business for supplies and services.

ATHENA Award
The ATHENA Award honors the Denver woman who best exemplifies: exceptional professional achievement, devotion to community service and generosity in actively assisting other women in their attainment of professional excellence and leadership skills.  A special panel of business and community leaders will choose the ATHENA Award finalists from nominations submitted by the Denver business community. 

The finalists and award recipient were honored at a gala event on April 30, 2009.