The 36th Annual Edison Awards landed in Fort Myers recently. It’s an annual celebration of innovation, collaboration and ideas that often revolutionize how we live and work.
Hundreds of the world’s top innovators came to Fort Myers to honor excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design, and innovation.
Established in 1987, The Edison Awards have honored some of the most innovative products and business leaders in the world.
Recently program organizers started the Lewis Latimer Fellowship, to recognize, cultivate and celebrate Black innovators who often go unnoticed.
Jon Cropper saw the need to develop a program designed to help those often underrepresented in the tech and innovation industry.
“We have to find creative ways to celebrate diversity in the innovation eco-system. And that really was the birth of the Lewis Latimer program which is in its 2nd year.”
The fellowship is named after Lewis Latimer an inventor who worked alongside Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and others in the post-Civil war era. Latimer was instrumental in the development of Edison’s light bulb as well as Alexander Graham Bell’s Telephone.
Dr. Lisa Dyson is one of the six fellows.
“Innovating is challenging, it takes time and effort, lots of people are involved. And to have an event that is focused on celebrating the hard work that has led to things that finally and actually work is amazing.”
Soton Rosanwo is founder and CEO of Centinel, a startup that focuses on insurance solutions, She’s also a Lewis Latimer fellow and shares what she believes are the keys to successful innovation.
“Having a strong idea, that’s grounded in human verified human need. And then also bring the process and the efficiency and the operations to set ourselves apart.”
Dr. D. Fox Harrell is a professor at MIT in Massachusetts and a Latimer fellow. He’s glad to see more diversity in innovation.
“I think that the Latimer Fellowship represents that progress of people seeing diversity and innovation as being as being tied to one another.”
The other 2023 Lewis Latimer Fellows include: Jacquelle Amankonah Horton, Ian Randall and Shameik Moore.
The Lewis Latimer Fellowship program runs for a year.
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