Smart Business Magazine, January 2019

16 Smart Business Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Winter 2019 C incinnati International Wine Festivals Executive Director Debbie Dent has skillfully and strategically maximized the festivals small nonprofit budget to creatively cultivate fresh ideas spearhead new initiatives and develop new partnerships to have a broad reaching positive impact on numerous charitable organizations across Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Now in its 29th year the festival features 700 wines from 250 wineries across the globe all to benefit 35 Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky arts education and health and human services charities Dent handed out a record 453000 in grants to the charities in 2018 and led the festival to exceed 56 million in total since its inception In her role only a few years Dents pioneering leadership style would lead outside observers to believe she likely has managed a team of 20 for 15 years or more In addition to planning and overseeing the operations for the weekend long festival she also manages dozens of high end dinners at restaurants across the city while wrangling hundreds of volunteers and hosting thousands of Cincinnatians at the Duke Energy Convention Center for grand tasting events She manages relationships with hundreds of partners sponsors patrons and beneficiaries as well as the event planning operations and budget management of an annual golf tournament and numerous other promotional events and activities With a background of running successful small businesses for 25 years Dent finds ways to cut costs and increase revenue by applying for profit business strategies to nonprofit operations Thanks to her fearless leadership the 2018 wine festival was the best attended on record Debbie Dent Executive Director Cincinnati International Wine Festival N O N P R O F I T E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R O F T H E Y E A R AWA R D A s executive director Julie Heath has led the Economics Center to remarkable growth in several areas For example when Heath came to the Center the financial outlook was mediocre at best A major donor had recently pulled its support putting the Centers future in jeopardy Heath pulled together a subcommittee of the finance committee conducted biweekly meetings to assess the Centers cash flow situation re organized staffing and got the nonprofit through that difficult time Now the Center is very well situated with a new endowment to fund a program and six months of operating expenses in reserve Perhaps the most notable impact Heath has had on the Economics Center is martPath After spending several months researching Heath pulled together a task force of board members to help guide the product development She engaged a team of developers and together they produced martPath a digital platform that delivers economic and financial literacy instruction in a classroom setting to students in grades 1 8 martPath has won two national curriculum awards and has over 22000 teachers across the country using it Most importantly with an initial 1 million investment in three years time martPath has generated 14 million in gross revenue Heath empowers her staff to think bigger encouraging them to move beyond what is to what might be That approach has led to many program improvements both large and small that have kept the Center moving and improving Julie Heath Ph D Executive director Economics Center N O N P R O F I T E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R O F T H E Y E A R AWA R D 2019Pill r Award for Community Service