Kat Gordon, founder of the 3 Percent Conference added a new award to the conference’s award ceremony this year: the Nancy Hill award.
The 3 Percent Conference, a movement designed to get more women in creative leadership positions, was held in New York in the beginning of November.
According to Gordon, she wanted to find a way to honor Nancy Hill, CEO of the 4A’s, a trade organization in the advertising agency, before she left the 4As in 2017.
“I felt such an indebtedness to her for her friendship and support,” Gordon explained. “I reached out to Alison Fahey to see if they were planning anything like this and they weren’t (yet) and were delighted to see us spearhead something.”
“ It was wonderful to tell her in person because she got very teary,” Gordon added.
“I couldn’t be more humbled that Kat and the 3% Conference chose to name a new and prestigious award in honor of my work,”Hill wrote, in a Nov. 10 4’As blog post. “Helping women to move forward in their careers has been a large part of what I’ve considered to be a mission: creating a more diverse workforce and humanistic work places in the industry.”
Lisen Stromberg, the COO of the 3 Percent Conference echoed Gordon’s thoughts.
“Given that Nancy is now she is stepping away from the 4A’S, if she isn’t an emblem, I don’t know what it is,” she stated. “It seems so clear to us that actually having a Nancy Hill award for true champions in our industry matters.”
The 3 Percent Conference chose long time supporter, Cindy Gallop , advertising consultant and Founder of IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn companies, as the first recipient of this award.
Gallop, a huge supporter and advocate for the mission of the 3% Conference, always keynotes at the conference.
Gallop said she was honored to receive the award. Her keynote also closed the conference in which she had one major ask for the attendees.
“I want you take everything you have heard about in the past couple of days, every new contact you have made, every friend you have made, every resource I have cited in my presentation, every resource anyone else has talked about, and I want you to get out there and be the future of advertising,” she said.
Gallop elaborated that she did not want to deliver another keynote at a 3 Percent Conference that has her as frustrated as she is today.
“I want to be on stage at the 6th 3 Percent Conference, telling a very different story, pointing to a very different industry, looking at very different business results, and looking at a completely transformed industry infrastructure ecosystem,” she exclaimed. “Every single one of you in this room can make that happen so please do it for us, do it for yourself, and do it for the future of our industry.”
Gordon explained that Gallop’s support has meant a lot to her throughout the process.
“I chose Cindy as the inaugural recipient because she has been such a generous giver of advice and wisdom to me (personally), and to the entire 3% Community,” Gordon told DIVERGE.
“And of course who better to than get that first award than Cindy Gallop, who is absolutely, I just think of her as Xena warrior princess out there fighting the good fight,” Stromberg added.
