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Recently, CXPA opened nominations for its 2022 Emerging Leader Awards. Gabe Smith, CCXP, sat down with Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP, to talk about the nature of the award, how to apply for it, and its benefits to winners. Apply today--or nominate a deserving emerging leader in your organization! The nomination deadline is July 1.

Gabe Smith, CCXP: Hey everyone, I'm Gabe Smith CCXP. And I'm the Content Manager and Associate Director for the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Recently CXPA opened nominations for its second annual Emerging Leader awards. This is a very exciting, I've invited Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP to join me today to talk a little bit more about the awards. Danielle is a CX professional, who is a past winner of the award. And she's also a member of CXPA's Diversity and Inclusion advancement committee. So welcome, Danielle.

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: Thank you so much, Gabe, it's great to see you.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Great to see you as well. So talk to us a little bit about the Emerging Leader awards. Can you tell the audience--what exactly are these awards?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: Absolutely. So our goal is to recognize and support up and coming leaders in the field, who are creating better customer experiences for their organizations.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: That is fantastic. I love the phrase, you know, sort of up and coming. I know we'll get into it a little bit more detail. But tell us a little bit more--I know I mentioned you're a past winner of the award. What is the nature of your involvement with the award program?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: Yeah, that's correct. I was very honored to be one of the inaugural awardees. And it's been a lot of fun serving as chair of the program this year.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP  : Yep. Absolutely. I know. It's very exciting. You know, we talked about up and comers. So let's unpack that a little bit a bit more. Tell us who exactly is eligible? What does it mean, you know, sort of up and coming?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP : Great question. So it doesn't matter your age. What matters is that you're newer to customer experience, that you want to have a career in the field and that you are actively working on growing skills in the profession. Practitioners in any organization are eligible. So that includes practitioners who may work at provider organizations, as long as they're doing customer experience work within that company.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Absolutely. So not age-specific, but we're really looking at, you know, someone who is newer to the field of CX, who's really making that demonstrable impact in their organization, whether that's, you know, in a practitioner role, or in a provider, provider role, as well. So, for those who may be considering applying themselves, or who may be considering nominating someone else, why should they do this? What are the benefits to winners, and what benefits will winners receive?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: I see two major benefits. One is it's a mark of credibility, so much like the CCXP, it is a way that you can put on your resume or on your LinkedIn, and people can look at it and go, Wow, you really are a leader, you know, not just in your company, but in your field. I know for me that's been really personally meaningful, especially at this point in my career, to give that mark of credibility as I'm seeking to advance. The other major benefit that I didn't even realize when I was going through the process is there are tangible programmatic benefits. So you get to meet all the leaders in our field, you get to build community with the other awardees, you get access to certain resources that CXPA has--it's a really robust program that you benefit from once you've been selected.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great benefit, this idea that, you know, as an emerging leader, we will invest in you, invest in your career development, connect you with resources. I think that is so great. Certainly something that, you know, I wish was around when I started in the field, and so very exciting to hear about this. Would love to a little bit, learn a little bit more from your perspective about why should organizations consider nominating someone for the award.

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: It's a great way to recognize top performers and affirm the work that they're doing and build their loyalty to your organization because you've taken the time to recognize them. And it's also a way to build visibility to your organization and the customer experience advances that you've made.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think certainly in the times that we're in, where, you know, we hear about the great resignation, we hear about some of those types of things. What a great way to signal your commitment to your employees, your investment in your employees, your recognition of your employees to nominate them for something like the Emerging Leader Award, I think that's fantastic. So, you know, I know the question that everyone would be curious about--what all is needed to apply, you know, how do they go about doing this? What's sort of the process like?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: So I'll say this twice, the application deadline is July 1. And what you're going to want to do is go to the CXPA website, there's a banner at the top, you're going to want to click that link. And there's a short basic form where you can nominate yourself, if you're interested in the program or nominate someone else if you want to recognize someone else as part of the program. And then the nominee needs to upload a video of themselves answering three short questions by the application deadline to accompany that application. So again, that deadline is July 1 2022, July 1.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Great. So it's a completed form, answer a few questions via video, I know we'll pop the link here into this post as well so that people can be able to access that. That is fantastic. So you know, I'm excited for this. I think this is phenomenal. Why are you excited about this, Danielle?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: I love this award, because it's unique. There are so many wonderful programs that recognize senior leaders. But what I love about this is it has the opportunity to make such a huge difference for someone who's earlier in their career, to give them that credibility, to give them that boost, those access to resources and connections, it can really change the trajectory of where you're headed in customer experience. And it's a great way for our profession to invest in our future. What I'm excited about this year, in particular, is one of our goals around increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the program. And so we're very deliberately recruiting a diverse group of judges as well as nominees and we're committed to recognizing one awardee from each region of CXPA.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: That's fantastic. So 10 global regions, no matter where you are in the world, we want you to apply for this award, right?

 Danielle Wipperfurth, CCXP: Absolutely. Yeah.

 Gabe Smith, CCXP: Danielle, so this is exciting. You mentioned sort of the uniqueness of this award, I think there's really something to that, you know, CXPA celebrates the Impact Award, which is about an individual's impact in their organization, or their impact on the CX profession. We've got the Innovation Award, which is an organizational award, that looks at companies that are putting customers at the center of their innovation work, but this really feels like it's filling a unique space. So that it's not just the names of you know, all the people that we know the CX thought leaders, this is, who is that next cohort of CX leaders in our industry, they're doing that fantastic work. This is phenomenal. So if you would like to apply yourself or if you'd like to nominate someone in your network for this year's award, as I mentioned, we've included the link to do that here. As Danielle said the application deadline is July 1. So really hope you consider applying yourself or nominating someone you know. Thank you, Danielle. Take care everyone and thank you in advance for recognizing emerging leaders in customer experience.