Fab5 awards celebrate hard work through difficult times

Last month, Tompkins Connect announced the winners of the 6th Annual Fab5 Young Professional Awards. The award ceremony, which livestreams March 4, celebrates not just the efforts of the seven winners but also the many individuals, organizations and businesses that have grappled with so many challenges but still stayed strong and helped their community throughout the past year.

The Fab5 awards, sponsored by Tompkins Trust Company, Communiqué Design & Marketing and the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, were originally created to celebrate the “achievements of young professionals who are excelling in their fields and making an impact in Tompkins County,” according to a recent press release. Though that goal has remained consistent, this year, the Fab5 Committee specifically sought out young professionals who have managed to excel despite the challenges created by the pandemic.

“Fab5 is a unique event that showcases the great work young professionals are doing in our community,” said David Walton, event and program manager at the Chamber and member of the Fab5 Committee, in a recent press release. “This past year has been challenging in so many ways, but it has been inspiring to see so many people step up and help each other out.”

This year, two additional awards were added: an Essential Worker “Hero” award and an Above and Beyond award. The former was created early on to recognize the many essential workers who have worked throughout the pandemic, and the latter was created after receiving many nominations in multiple categories for a specific individual.

The winners this year are Johanna Anderson, Not-for-Profit Leader of the Year; Patrick Blackman, Business Leader of the Year; Ben Sandberg, Rookie of the Year; Olivia Ashline-Royale, Entrepreneur of the Year; Juliana Garcia, Volunteer of the Year; Emily Mallar, Essential Worker “Hero” Award; and Melissa Madden, Above and Beyond Award.

Because so many in the community have stepped up this past year to help one another, it was no surprise that the committee received a record number of nominations for the awards. And the award winners recognize that communitywide effort, as Adrianne Torea, content marketing manager for Communiqué, explained.

“Last year, honestly, people just kind of accepted the award and were fine with it,” she said. “And now, this year is like, ‘It’s not about me. I want to recognize everyone that helped.’”

Madden has worked in the farming community since 2000 and recently became a manager at Urban Core LLC, the real estate development company that opened Press Bay Alley in 2014. She joined Urban Core in late 2019, when the company started planning a mixed-use development project — still in progress — on Cherry Street in Ithaca that will have a large urban farm component, she said.

Madden’s dedication to feeding the community has continued during the pandemic. She helped create and currently leads the Press Bay Food Hub, which was created last year to connect area farmers and other food producers with local shoppers. She is also a member of the Tompkins County Food Task Force.

All her involvement in the community earned Madden the highest number of nominations for this year’s Fab5 awards, but as far as Madden’s concerned, the award isn’t really for her.

“It’s really important to acknowledge that this award — I get that I got it — but it’s really an acknowledgment of the necessity of food access in Ithaca, which has always been an issue,” she said. “COVID really offered a lot of us the opportunity to make a point that we’ve been trying to make louder. And for me, it was also an opportunity as a farmer to step into the food rescue community, which I found to be, I think, some of the best people I’ve ever worked with.”

Similar to Madden, Garcia has worked to serve those in need throughout the pandemic. Garcia is a second-generation family and community educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County and helped to develop Tompkins County Mutual Aid, which was formed toward the start of the pandemic to help those who were struggling and continues to work with that goal in mind today.

While Garcia is grateful for the recognition the Volunteer of the Year award gives her, she said the idea of one person getting rewarded for so many others’ work contradicts the very nature of a mutual aid group.

“To individualize something like, especially, mutual aid, it’s the complete opposite of what mutual aid stands for and what it is,” she said. “I am very appreciative, obviously, of everyone who thought of me, nominated me and stuff, but … that’s not really what it’s about, and that’s not really what it is. So, it just shows us that we need to keep being in the trenches of the political ed component of mutual aid so that more people get an understanding of it.”

Mallar is another winner who has helped the county fight COVID-19. She is the director of care management at Cayuga Health Partners, a position that typically involves a lot of population health management, as she described. COVID-19 shifted that focus, and at the start of the pandemic, Mallar worked with the Tompkins County Health Department on outreach to patients awaiting COVID-19 test results. Later, she helped to counsel patients who had a positive test result.

“People can go on the portal and see that they’re positive, but it’s very different to have a human to ask all those questions to you when you see that result and perhaps panicked, or maybe you have small children, or maybe it is a small child that’s positive, and so on and so forth,” she said. “It’s just nice to know that we can lend that support to people who are scared and oftentimes quite vulnerable and oftentimes in tricky situations.”

Like Madden and Garcia, Mallar recognizes that she is part of a whole team of people who worked to meet community needs in 2020 and continues to do so today.

Anderson also called attention to that team mentality. Anderson is the executive director of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services, a local nonprofit that has consistently worked to provide low-income residents the housing they need. As she described, being recognized out of an “amazing cadre” of nonprofits is great in any year, but in 2020, that feeling is amplified.

“It totally floors me because I have spent the last year in countless Zoom meetings with other nonprofit leaders who have been really phenomenal,” she said. “They’ve inspired me. They’ve supported me. And so, to say that I’m getting this award, it’s pretty, pretty humbling because I know firsthand the work that all of these other nonprofit leaders have been doing.”

Sandberg shared a similar sentiment. He joined The History Center in Tompkins County in 2019, and his Rookie of the Year award recognizes his creativity and commitment to his role and helping his organization grow. Sandberg shared what winning means to him.

“It means that our team here at The History Center is doing something right and that I’m glad that it recognizes all of their contributions,” he said. “I feel lucky to be part of building the space and foundation for us to celebrate, explore and critique our local history because I very much believe that in order to be ethical and responsible stewards of our future, we today have to look back at how we set ourselves up with the challenges that we face today.”

Ashline-Royale and Blackman were both recognized for their hard work in the business sector. Ashline-Royale is the owner of Easy Living Hats, a sustainable hat company based in Ithaca, and Blackman is the executive chef at Coltivare in Ithaca.

Ashline-Royale’s business has been around for over four years, but it saw a big spike in business during the pandemic. Easy Living Hats was already set up for online sales prior to the pandemic hitting the county, so when social distancing was put in place and people switched to more e-commerce, Easy Living Hats was well poised to succeed in a changed market.

The growth led to Ashline-Royale hiring additional help, which created its own set of challenges, like the need for a new, larger place to work.

“Before, I was working from home, which was fine. And with my son being out of school, I was able to homeschool and work from home,” she said. “But now that I’ve hired help, there needs to be a location for us to all meet and finish hats and do some packaging and distribution, things like that.”

As a single mom in a lower income bracket, finances have consistently been a challenge for Ashline-Royale’s business, but she persisted, and that persistence is commended through the Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Ashline-Royale has secured a location in Ithaca and is currently holding a Crowdfunder to raise money to renovate the location to make it ready for production. Visit https://ifundwomen.com/projects/easy-living-hats-workspace-build-out to donate.

Blackman’s work has also grown considerably within the past year. He and others at Coltivare have had to adapt to pandemic requirements, like offering to-go meals and spreading out the restaurant’s layout. As far as the award goes, Blackman mostly credits his win to his leadership of the cooking classes at Coltivare.

“That really was a big opportunity to do things with the food service workers, with different schools and stuff like that,” he said. “I think that that’s something that was just me doing my part and what I could for the community because not a lot of restaurants are fortunate enough to have the space and equipment to do something like that as a hub.”

All members of the community are invited to the free virtual 2021 Fab5 Young Professional Awards Celebration on March 4 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The event will be livestreamed with a watch party option, and there will be a special signature Fab5 cocktail that can be purchased from Monks on the Commons and enjoyed at home while watching the event.

Madalene Ulrich, communications manager at Communiqué, encouraged residents to join in the celebrations and shared her hopes for both this year’s celebration and next.

“Seeing these people and their contributions to the community, and coming out of winter, I hope it’s a very inspiring event for people and it makes them want to get involved in their community,” she said. “And hopefully, next year, we’re able to do a live event.”

Katie Shaw, marketing and community relations specialist at Tompkins Trust Company, shared that sentiment.

“We hope people enjoy themselves,” she said. “And we hope that these incredible stories are told and that they inspire other people and that the people that have deserved these awards and have been honored with them are celebrated and recognized in a great way.”

Visit http://www.tompkinschamber.org/Fab5Awards to learn more about the winners and to register for the event.