The Santa Clarita Valley Leadership Awards is now accepting nominations for their inaugural event designed to recognize top-performing businesses and individuals throughout the Santa Clarita Valley.

“We were trying to figure out a way to reach businesses that we don’t typically reach to acknowledge them. There are a lot of great businesses in the Santa Clarita Valley and they all deserve to be recognized and honored in some way so we came up with this event and this is the inaugural one,” Terri Crain, President/CEO Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The SCV Leadership Awards are a collaboration of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, the Santa Clarita Valley Economic Development Corporation and the Valley Industry Association.

Crain calls the partnership historic.

“This the first time in as much of Santa Clarita history that I know of where all three entities the Chamber, VIA and the EDC have gotten together to work together to collaborate on something of this type of scale to bring to the community,” said Crain.

The nominating process requires downloading the nomination form which can be found by clicking here.

The forms can then be faxed to the SCV Chamber of Commerce at 661-702-6980 or emailed to scvleadershipawards@yahoo.com.

A business will then be notified they’ve been nominated. Each nomination is counted as a vote, so if someone wants their favorite business to win they need to submit the most votes in the form of a faxed or emailed nomination.

“What we’re seeing happen is that companies that are nominated are filling out the forms on their own, making copies and having people who are their employees or the people within their sphere of influence just write their names on them and they’re submitting them,” said Crain.

The purpose of the event is to not only to give Santa Clarita Valley businesses greater exposure and visibility, but also non-profits.

“There are a lot of non-profits in the Santa Clarita Valley doing great work and great things. And a large sector of the community, we feel, don’t know that they’re here,” said Crain.

Voting closes July 16th for nominees in the following categories:

* Minority/Woman Owned Business Award

* Non-profit Leadership

* Best Community Spirit

* Innovation of Product or Service

* Family Owned Business

* Business Leadership

* Rising Star

* Small Business (1-50 employees)

* Medium Business (51-200 employees)

* Large Business (201+ employees)

The awards ceremony will take place Thursday, August 16 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Valencia. Registration begins at 5:30 p.m. and the program starts at 6 p.m.

Seats are $35 per person or $350 for a table of 10.