Page Up Recognizes 2023 Innovation Award Winner Molly Rauzi, Runner-up Chrys Kefalas

The Page Up Innovation Award recognizes Page Up members who develop and implement groundbreaking approaches that are used by their organizations to chart new pathways in the profession. The accomplishment was recently awarded at the 2023 Page Up Annual Conference in Atlanta, earlier this month.

Late last year, our profession was rocked by the advent of Generative AI, which has already begun to fundamentally alter corporate communications. As a result, the innovation award committee recognized Molly Rauzi, managing director and CIO at Gagen McDonald, as the 2023 Innovation Award winner. Her submission highlighted her team’s ability to innovate and onboard new generative AI technologies, even in the midst of being acquired by a larger organization. 

“I do want to say, I had a little bit of an (advantage),” Molly explained. “Having grown up in the world of technology, when generative AI came around, I was very keen on how we could leverage it. But this is more a story about culture and leadership… In  February, we took our digital strategy team at Gagen and completely re-energized and re-focused ourselves on generative AI. The team was so brave throughout the company, looking for use cases, looking for new opportunities.”

In addition to the award winner, the innovation award committee selected Chrys Kefalas, managing vice president of brand at National Association of Manufacturing, as the runner-up, with specific compliments to the impact his project had on his organization.

“Chrys’ submission was for a program called ‘Many Creators Wanted,’” Innovation award committee co-chair Ethan McCarty explained. “It was an effort to get young people more interested in the skilled trades and manufacturing. It resulted in 84% of the 11,000 students who participated, having an increased interest in careers in manufacturing.”

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