Celebration of Achievemen

2018 Celebration of Achievement Award Winner Announced

Beauty tycoon, Eveline Charles, named 2018 Celebration of Achievement Award Winner

Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (AWE) is pleased to announce Eveline Charles as the
recipient of this year’s Celebration of Achievement Award, which recognizes an exceptional woman entrepreneur who has built a business in Alberta with a significant impact on the economy and the community.

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The Alberta-based Founder and CEO of EvelineCharles Salons | Spas | Beauty MD will be recognized at the 2018 Celebration of Achievement award reception on April 25th at the Sutton Place Hotel in Edmonton, sponsored by ATB Financial.

“We are honoured to recognize such a deserving person with this year’s Celebration of Achievement award. Eveline is a true business leader and inspiration; she aims high and remains focused on achieving her vision,” explains Marcela Mandeville, CEO of AWE.

With six successful salons and spas across Alberta and almost 200 employees, Eveline Charles has dominated the beauty industry for over 40 years. Eveline's determination to become the market leader led to the expansion of her business in 2005 to include the EvelineCharles Academy - a state-of- the-art facility where future beauty industry leaders could harness and perfect their trade.

The next venture for Eveline was expanding into custom product manufacturing with EC Labs. Founded in 2016, EC Labs is Canada’s newest beauty, health, and wellness product manufacturer. In addition, EvelineCharles Salons | Spas | Beauty MD has now begun franchising locations as a future expansion strategy.

“I am very grateful to receive this prestigious award. It is really humbling to be a recipient of this award in the presence of so many female entrepreneurs and leaders. This honour means so much to me, as entrepreneurship runs through my veins. I am so passionate about driving, growing, and reinventing my business every day to be a leader in our industry,” Charles said of her win.

"Growing a business into a successful and sustainable enterprise requires passion, perseverance and a plan. Eveline is a trailblazing entrepreneur, whose vision and leadership has enabled her to grow her business in a lasting and meaningful way. She's an inspiration so many women, and entrepreneurs across this province and country," says Teresa Clouston, Executive Vice-President of ATB Business & Agriculture. "On behalf of the ATB team, I am pleased to congratulate Eveline and all the awards winners."

At the reception on April 25, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs will honour Charles and her role as a leader in female entrepreneurship, as well as announce the recipients of three other award categories including Emerging Innovator Award, Emerging Award and Upsurge Award.

Anyone wishing to celebrate the outstanding women entrepreneurs in our province is invited to attend the reception. Tickets for the can be reserved here.

Celebration of Achievement Reception Re-Cap

We were thrilled to celebrate with some amazing women entrepreneurs, community partners, sponsors, friends and family on May 18, 2017 at our Celebration of Achievement Reception. 

This year we hosted the event at the beautiful Oasis Centre in Edmonton. The room was filled with joy, excitement and buzz. With over 200 people in the room, we were honoured to receive greetings from the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, The Honuorable Navdeep Bains and hear MLA for Edmonton-Meadowlark Jon Carson share his welcome from the Government of Alberta.

The event was dedicated to not only celebrating our 2017 Celebration of Achievement recipient, Jeanette DeBruin, but also announcing the recipients of our Emerging Entrepreneur Award, Emerging Innovator Award and Upsurge Award.

The anticipation built as a video of the finalists in each category appeared on the screen (to view these videos, please click here). We also had a surge of social media which had #AWECelebrates trending on Twitter. Check out our favourite tweets here.

We were thrilled to announce the following as our 2017 Award Recipients:

Jeanette DeBruin, AltaPro Electric, 2017 Celebration of Achievement Award Recipient

Kristi Stuart and Jill Belland, Barre Belle YYC, 2017 AWE Emerging Entrepreneur Award Recipient

Lane Edwards, Pura Botanicals, 2017 AWE Emerging Innovator Award Recipient

Nancy Klensch, Summit Kids, 2017 AWE Upsurge Award Recipient

From Left to Right: Jeannette DeBruin, Lane Edwards, Nancy Klensch, Kristi Stuart

From Left to Right: Jeannette DeBruin, Lane Edwards, Nancy Klensch, Kristi Stuart

We were very excited to celebrate with these amazing women. We would also like to extend a huge congratulations to all of our nominees and finalists. You are all doing amazing things for our communities and local economies.

A special thanks goes out to our presenting sponsor, ATB Business. We could not do this event without you! Thank you for recognizing the importance of entrepreneurship and making it a focus for your business. We would also like to thank Grant Thornton for your help with our nominee selection process. Thank you to Hillberg and Berk for the beautiful gifts for our recipients and generous gifts for all attendees of the awards program. And last, but certainly not least we would like to thank Quinn Ohler from Global Edmonton for volunteering her time to emcee this year's program.

Our awards program will open again in 2018. If you know someone who would be deserving of one of our four awards, let us know! We can't wait to celebrate with you all next year.