By Thomas Gnau
Dayton Daily News, Ohio
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) It is so amazing to see women in leadership like Boost’s Chief Executive Anita Emoff crushing it in tech. The Women Presidents’ Organization, recently ranked Boost Technologies of Dayton No. 39 on the annual ranking of the nation’s fastest growing women-led businesses. To be considered for the ranking, businesses must be privately-owned, owned or led by a woman and they must generate at least $500,000 annual revenue.
Dayton Daily News, Ohio
At Boost Technologies, some things are as reliable as clockwork — like being recognized for being among the nation’s fastest growing women-led businesses.
But things change, too. The company recently brought on a trio of new executives, including Dawn Conway, a former senior vice president at LexisNexis — Conway is a 21 year veteran of that Miami Twp. company — and a former chief operating officer of Cision in Chicago.
“We were very fortunate,” said Anita Emoff, Boost chief executive, of her meeting with Conway. “I swear it was fate.”
Conway is now Boost’s president. Emoff and her husband Michael, a third-generation owner of Shumsky Promotional, met Conway and decided she was a perfect cultural fit with Boost. (Boost Technologies, LLC is the parent company of Shumsky Promotional and Boost Rewards.)
More than three years in Chicago traffic was enough for Conway and her husband Mark to realize that “Dayton is our home,” she said.
“I was looking for a company who is invested in Dayton, gives back to the community and whose products and services I could get behind,” Conway said.
Boost also hired a new chief financial officer, Darren Taulbe, and a new vice president of sales and marketing, Mattycq Toomb.
The Women Presidents’ Organization, in partnership with American Express, recently ranked Boost and Emoff No. 39 on the annual ranking of the nation’s fastest growing women-led businesses.
Boost is the only Dayton company on the list.
Melissa Cutcher, Better Business Bureau vice president of business relations and upcoming director of the Women in Business Networking group, congratulated Emoff.
“Over the past decade women-owned businesses have increased 68 percent and we are proud one of our very own is being recognized,” Cutcher said.
“It takes a lot of work,” Emoff said in an interview at Boost’s East Fourth Street offices. “It’s not by sleeping or taking a vacation that we are on” the list.
Her company’s gross revenue grew from $20 million in 2013 to $23 million in 2015, according to the WPO.
It’s not Boost’s first time on the list. In 2013, Boost Technologies, doing business as Boost Rewards, placed at No 7. The business ranked 19th in 2012 and 33rd in 2011.
To be considered for the ranking, businesses must be privately-owned, owned or led by a woman and they must generate at least $500,000 annual revenue.
Boost’s 70 employees are all in Dayton.
In the recognition and promotional industry, Boost has to be in tune to how its clients’ employees want to be rewarded, what motivates them, what makes them tick, said Emoff, a native of Denmark.
“We’re always thinking about our younger generation,” Emoff said. “How are they going to want to be communicated to? What motivates them?”
Boost has acquired Fortune 100 companies and Silicon Valley businesses as clients in the past few years, but she declined to name them.
“Some of these are very well-known technology companies,” she said. “We use their apps every day.”
But she finds that these companies, many of whom are household names, are “really focusing on diversity.” And what their employees want is to be heard, to be recognized. They want platforms to express themselves.
“It’s very different from the old incentives,” Emoff said.
