Nomination for Secretary’s Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE)

Dear Members,

The Secretary’s Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE), now in its 21st year, is an opportunity to recognize and promote U.S. businesses as responsible and reliable partners who add value to the communities where they do business. The ACE aligns with the U.S. government’s goal to promote responsible business conduct by championing companies that are achieving high standards.

CATEGORIES THIS YEAR

This year the ACE will have winners in three categories:

Award for Corporate Excellence for Innovation will honor a company’s commitment to using emerging technologies to provide breakthrough solutions and products in line with American values.

  • Description: The innovative ideas, solutions, and products that U.S. businesses create help establish our nation’s position as a leader in global technology and help secure our nation’s future. This category aims to encourage innovation by U.S. businesses and its application in support of global development challenges in ways that transform the communities where these companies operate. This category highlights prominent American company leaders in emerging technology sectors such as automated vehicles, blockchain, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, digital payments, digital assets, and cloud computing. We seek to emphasize how American companies are leading innovators in these technology sectors while respecting human rights and exemplifying ethical and sustainable business practices.

Award for Corporate Excellence in Sustainable Energy Security will honor a company’s commitment to developing resilient and responsible sourcing, generation, transmission, and delivery of energy or energy resources in and from its international operations.

  • Description: As Secretary Pompeo said in his March 2019 CERAWeek address to the energy industry: “the more we can spread the United States’ model of free         enterprise, rule of law, transparency, diversity, and stability of energy supply, the more successful and secure the American people will be.” Candidate companies excelling in this field enhance the Department’s global energy security efforts by contributing to global energy access sustainably, and thus to global economic and human development. Candidate companies further American interests by widening the tools our diplomats have to create partnerships and open global markets. The category’s focus will be on companies promoting sustainable, inclusive, and equitable economic growth through energy-related endeavors. This can include any of the U.S. government’s “all-of-the-above” (from wind, solar, nuclear, and biofuels to gas and oil) energy sources and technologies for promoting U.S. energy and energy technology endeavors abroad.

Award for Corporate Excellence for Women’s Economic Empowerment will honor a company’s commitment to supporting women’s economic empowerment through its values, strategies, policies, and procedures, and operational practices.

  • Description: Empowering women in the workplace is a significant driver of economic growth and prosperity, and improves the quality of life for women, men, families, and communities. This category seeks to promote companies’ strides to champion women’s professional advancement and empowerment in corporate environments. To this end, we seek to recognize companies’ operations that address: balanced representation of women on C-suite corporate boards and in local operations, parental leave, equal opportunity, and non-discrimination policies, professional training and development, women’s entrepreneurship, enterprise development, supply chain, and marketing policies, pay equity, and transparency.  We encourage nominations of women-owned businesses with high standards of empowering women within their operations.

Eligibility Requirements

The following are the eligibility requirements for the award:

  • A nominee must be a U.S. firm headquartered in the United States or a subsidiary of a U.S. firm, with at least 51 percent U.S. equity ownership.
  • Nominations must be for policies, programs, and/or activities in the specific country of nomination.
  • The activities for which a firm is nominated must have been in place for at least one year prior to submission of the nomination.
  • Nominations of a single company may be made in multiple categories, but separate nominations are required for each category. A company will only be selected as a winner in one category.

Kindly submit your application no later than March 6th, 2020 to [email protected] 

Click to download – 2020 Nomination Form