And the Arc Award Team Winners Are...

Reinventing the Spanish Experience ...

I attended the first bi-annual Idearc Awards Celebration Gala yesterday afternoon and last night at the Westin Galleria in Dallas, TX. This was a HUGE deal for the nominees because we were setting a precedent for the rest of Company...first year winners and all. The theme for the evening therefore symbolized many "firsts" which happened in America and around the world. The televised webcast featured stories and video clips of famous people who made amazing first impressions with their work, inventions, philosophies...examples cited were Neil Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Madame Curie, the Beatles...just to mention a few of the many names highlighted.

Our team, "Reinventing the Spanish Experience", won the first level award, the Sparc Award, and were eligible for the second level award, the Arc Award. We were the last Arc Award winners announced during the telecast, so we were getting a little nervous thinking that maybe our project was not as great as we may have thought! But we did win...and along with the win comes cash and trophies. Yay! Just to give you an idea of the project...we launched a new Verizon Yellow Pages product...a directory...entirely in the Spanish language, targeted to the Hispanic populations in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. We hired bilingual sales reps, bilingual Division Sales Managers, and bilingual General Sales Managers. I assisted with three training classes (in addition to managing my Customer Care Call Center), and also became heavily involved in changing the Customer Call Center agent options to include bilingual Customer Service representatives. That meant I had to do some creative hiring to manage our call tree option, "para espanol, oprima numero dos". So, when the team award nomination was submitted, I was very happy to be on the team slate. A true honor and privilege.

After the Awards telecast, we had some free time before the "red carpet" cocktail reception and dinner, speaker and live music and dancing. My escort for the evening was a very wonderful man from Dallas, Michael B. (purposefully omitting last name on the blog) . Michael and I met about five weeks ago, and we dated four times prior to the Idearc event. I was delighted when he agreed to be my guest for the evening. I've posted a couple of photos....they didn't turn out very well; I think because of the spotlights and glitter in the room:

So much fun to dress up in "after five" apparel; yes, I'm a Diva!

This one didn't turn out so well, but I posted it anyway.

Our amazing guest speaker, Dr. Jerry M. Linenger, US Astronaut who was the first American astronaut to board the Russian Space Station Mir. His son, John, is pictured in the center.