Greater Gainesville Chamber celebrates 2024 Annual Business of the Year Awards

With dim lighting and a spirit of celebration, the Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce opened its doors to the business of the year awards to celebrate with business owners and community leaders. A cocktail reception sponsored by HCA Florida Healthcare was followed by the dinner for the awards.

Eric Godet, President of the Greater Gainesville Chamber began the event with excitement, words of encouragement and recognition to all sponsors and attendees.

“Tonight is all about closing out 100 years of the Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce and looking into the future which I believe holds a lot of innovations for us. In fact, I am very excited about AI, I love technology so this year I’ve used AI to help me thank our sponsors and winners tonight,” said Godet.

Florida Blue was the co-presenting sponsor of the event and a representative from the company share on stage that “Telemedic and AI is something our industry is transforming with and adapting in order to help us detect the issues affecting the health of our community. Housing, education and food security are important factors to keep people healthy, and that leads to access to good health and medical innovations.” This is all part of the transformation that the health care system has been experiencing recently.

Ashley Bryant, Marketing Director of Butler Enterprises and R.D. Bonnaghan from Rebuilding Together North Central Florida hosted the event and shared their prediction in the new year and beyond for all GNV business. Bonnaghan mentioned that according to his vision into the future and his personal AI research, Alachua County will have millions of residents in 100 years from now.

“This party takes us to another level. Most of my close friends are here tonight, and if there is something most of us share in common it’s that Gainesville is a great place to live, work and invest,” said Bonnaghan.

The business of the year awards recognizes the best of local businesses in a variety of categories. Applicants are evaluated by three local business leaders to determine the finalists and a winner of each category. Winners are recognized as leaders in their specific industries.

Some of the standing winners for business of the year awards on Dec. 5 were InfoTech as a Tech company category, Nano Neurosciences in the category of New Business in the area providing solutions for vision issues, Great Healthcare Services Corp as Small Non-Profit that provides medical services and prescriptions for those in need, Trajector in the Veteran-Owned Business category, Scorpio Construction as Large Business with more than $2 million in revenue, and PHOS Creative as Employer of the year for its commitment to their employees, work environment and culture.

In a one-on-one with WUFT, Godet shared that “It’s important to celebrate these awards for all businesses that have been around for as long as the chamber has and for the new ones as well. As we get ready to go into the next century, we have to embrace who we are as a community so it’s really exciting to see the growth of new businesses but also watch other companies coming to acquire some of our local business. So that’s all part of the process of helping them grow faster, employ more people and invest more dollars in our community.”

In addition to the winners, other awards also recognized the commitment of research, diversity and inclusion in Gainesville and Alachua County area. The event ended with a round of applause for multiple business leaders.