Home (3rd Annual)

Host

Erik Passoja is a high-powered, hilarious, clean comedian, who tackles thought-provoking topics like science, religion, and world travel. Recent comedy credits include “Gotham Comedy Live”, Byron Allen´s "Comics Unleashed", "Last Comic Standing" semifinals in Los Angeles, and a stand-up comedy concert movie, "Spiritually Incorrect Comedy", now in post-production.

Since moving to Los Angeles with his wife Rita and her sixteen-pound cat, Erik has worked extensively. Credits include a recurring role on True Blood on HBO, appearances on Criminal Minds, 90210, Nip/Tuck, CSI, Without a Trace, CSI: Miami, Charmed, Hawaii Five O, and Firefly. He also played the role of Charles Manson in the ABC MOW The Beach Boys: An American Family and just starred in two films that are now in post-production, Réalité and Monty and the Runaway Furnace. His new comedy CD, “Only Child”, has just been released and can be found on all major media sites.

Special Guest

Rick Cole has served as City Manager of Santa Monica since June 2015. During his tenure, he has spearheaded work on the City Council’s five Strategic Goals: converting the Santa Monica Airport to parkland; forging a new model of mobility; taking regional leadership on homelessness; fostering an inclusive and diverse community; and promoting wellbeing so that residents Learn & Thrive.

Rick has been recognized as one of “America's Public Officials of the Year” by Governing Magazine and one of the "Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers" by Government Technology Magazine. He has won awards for municipal management excellence from the American Society of Public Administrators and the Municipal Management Association of Southern California, as well as for urban planning leadership from the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Speakers

Blythe Hill is the CEO and Founder of the Dressember Foundation, an anti-trafficking nonprofit organization that engages women and men in the fight to end modern-day slavery. Through their annual campaign, thousands of people across six continents commit to wearing dresses or bow ties for the month of December as a way to bring awareness and raise funding for anti-trafficking work. In four years, Dressember advocates have raised over $3MM USD. Originally hailing from Seattle, Blythe now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their puppy, Friday. She loves a good red wine, a good cheese, and a good pun.

Ryan Cummins is the Co-Founder & Vice Chairman of Omaze, an online fundraising platform that makes giving fun and easy by offering once-in-a-lifetime experiences and exclusive merchandise in support of critical causes. In just a few years, Omaze has disrupted traditional models of fundraising and raised millions for over 200 charities through campaigns with influencers such as Robert Downey Jr., Star Wars and John Legend. Prior to launching Omaze, Ryan was the executive producer of content for "Decade of Difference," the Clinton Foundation's globally televised concert event featuring influencers from film, music, politics and sports. Before that, he created Untitled Thinkers, a media property based on a series of intimate conversations he filmed with 120 Nobel Prize and Fields Medal winners, Pulitzers and Internet Pioneers. Ryan started his career in cause content as the first director on “Live Earth,” the largest concert ever thrown, featuring 150 artists in seven major cities, all on the same day. He holds a BA in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson.

Entertainment

Musical maverick Mark de Clive-Lowe seems an impossibility at first sight - juggling piano, synths, live sampling and beat making all on-the-fly, brought to life with a casual ease that’s mind-boggling. The Japanese-New Zealander was raised primarily in New Zealand where he learnt piano from a young age developing an avid passion for jazz through his father’s record collection. In high school, he fell in love with Native Tongues hip hop and early UK jungle – laying the foundation for what was to come next…

During his hugely formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, MdCL helped evolve broken beat alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music and leading global tastemaker DJ Gilles Peterson to designate him “the main behind a million great tunes”. Since 2008, MdCL has called Los Angeles, California home where his acclaimed club night CHURCH has taken his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe. Equal parts pianist, composer and live production wizard, MdCL’s sets are a treat for the listeners, the dancers, the progressives and the purists alike - as he casually erases the lines between genres and eras.

Our Media Partners

Radio Interview

Award Categories

Nominate the "do good/be good" companies and organizations creating the most positive social, economic, and environmental impact in Los Angeles! The 2018 nominations to make Los Angeles the best place to work is now CLOSED.

Conscious Leadership Of The Year

This category recognizes businesses with a dynamic, creative, and a visionary leader that has achieved sustained levels of growth and financial performance through a culture of innovation, market knowledge, and talent development.

Social Enterprise Of The Year

This category recognizes enterprises that exist to address a social or environmental need, reinvesting profit or surplus from trade to achieve its social mission and those achieving the greatest impact while demonstrating excellence in all aspects of enterprise.

People's Choice Of The Year

This category recognizes the highest voted enterprise using one (1) voting method to participate via Twitter. Account holders may participate by posting, from their Twitter account ("Twitter ID"), a Twitter Message (a tweet) with the assigned hashtag corresponding to ONE of the nominees they want to vote for.

[HAPPY] Place To Work Of The Year

This category recognizes enterprises that invest in people through employee strategies that best attracts, retains, and develops talent and demonstrates how it contributes to sustainable growth and being an employer of choice. Employers need to provide evidence of how employees are engaged in strategic goals and company values, and how human and supporting resources have been optimized to achieve competitive success.

Impact Of The Year

This category recognizes enterprises addressing social challenges and those that best demonstrate the improvement made to the communities in which they operate. The organizations that have evidence of where they have embedded its principles into its objectives and achieved a positive and lasting social impact through partnerships, investments, probono work, and/or employee led initiatives will be recognized.

Innovation Of The Year

This category recognizes all forms of successfully applied innovation, from new products and services to a culture of improvement, and celebrates the ideas that have had the greatest impact on an organization or industry. Organizations will be recognized for their demonstrated innovation and how that has developed and applied to improve its performance, operational effectiveness or customer engagement.