The 5th annual Pause Awards announced the 2022 Finalists, representing the most ambitious and forward-thinking companies in Australia. 

Dubbed as ‘The Home for Champions’ that’s building better ecosystems, the Pause Awards programme in 2022 is setting high standards for business recognition. Supporting this mission are the key partners from companies such as: Blackmagic Design, AWS Startups but also Give a Grad a Go, Pappyon and PositiveHR.

"The Pause Awards ‘22 entrants showed businesses have a key role to play in creating a more equitable and regenerative world. Submissions were authentic and bold in their approach to tackling some of society’s biggest challenges and delivering real and measurable change where it matters."

Lee Tonitto B. Com, MBA, GAICD and Chair at Pause Awards

There are many new things launched in 2022; one of them is 15 new categories that add to 32 categories in total, which sit under five key Category Tracks. Interesting fact to point out is that some of the new categories almost received no submissions that were aimed at VC firms, investors and Angels. 

One of the new fun categories is People’s Choice Award, which allows anybody to vote for the entries submitted, just by signing up. This epic race that took turns each week, resulted in Trendii winning with 522 votes! Trendii is changing the way you find fashion inspiration by allowing you to shop the looks of others, from their search engine, images, social media and websites.

From the macro perspective, there is no mistake that Australian businesses strived for excellence this year to combat unstable markets, hence why the Excellence Category Track was the most entered, followed by the Good and Operators.

George Hedon, CEO & Founder, Pause Awards

Let’s look at how 2022 performed in terms of the industries that entered awards. The 2022 saw the Education sector jump one spot up to fourth place, remarkably the Food & Beverage industry has completely disappeared from the entries altogether. There were some Hospitality, Travel & Leisure entries but pretty dry in the beverage department that charted at the third spot in 2021, whilst Web & Internet Services took the lead from Computer Tech. It’s refreshing to see Health breaking into the Top 5 industry chart this year. 

In terms of the most popular categories, there has definitely been some reshuffling. The Defiant Ones category, for new tech breakthroughs, was introduced last year and floated at fourth place, but it took the lead this year.

Out of 15 new categories in 2022, we saw Wildfire, Company of the Year and Women in Business rise to the Top 5 pushing Out of the Garage for scaling globally and B-Good for a good business off the top chart.

Global Judging Panel

The incredible judging pool of over 50 industry luminaries from across the globe have completed the First Round of judging in a record time, mostly due to the new Judge Portal system that distributes the scores.

The Final Round is done by the Judging Board, chaired by Lee Tonitto, Managing Director at Tonitto and Partners along with Ben Ford, Head of Growth at Frollo, Christina Gerakiteys; Co-CEO at SingularityU Australia; Sonia Clarke, Director, Future of Work, PwC and Tom Leyden, CIO at Longview who have debated and deliberated the winners.

The Pause Awards are highly competitive! The judges are experts in their field to ensure the highest quality of winning entries each year. The judging is based on the merit of an entry.  Congratulations to everyone on their brilliant efforts in navigating the 2022 turbulent and unexpected market forces!

In this episode, George Hedon, Founder of Pause Awards, speaks with (left to right) Antonia Grimard (Founder, AOK Creative), Jason Perelson (Creative Director, Synergy Group), and Taylor Tran (Facilitator, i4 Connect). They discussed key skills in business, their idea of success, industry expectations and more. 

Originally published by Pause Awards on 10 November 2022

82 Bold Finalists Announced for the Pause Awards ‘22