The Business Record today announces its 2025 innovationIOWA Award recipients.
The Great Outdoors Foundation, a nonprofit aiming to advance conservation through innovation, collaboration and stewardship, is the Lean TECHniques innovationLEADER of the Year.
The innovationENTREPRENEUR of the Year is Emily Steele, CEO and co-founder of the venture-backed marketing platform Hummingbirds.
CEO Hannah Inman leads the Great Outdoors Foundation, including its Conservation Acceleration Fund. The fund is designed to maximize investments in water quality by using private donations to help conservation projects meet public grant match requirements.
Steele’s company Hummingbirds pairs local content creators with local and national brands to create word-of-mouth marketing, The startup has raised over $10 million to date from investors including Allos Ventures, Ground Game, M25 Fund, InnoVenture Iowa Fund, ISA Ventures, Next Level Ventures, AltiVentures and Homegrown Capital. Starting in Iowa, the company now serves 22 cities nationwide.
Each winner will be profiled in the 2025 innovationIOWA Magazine. Here is one question we asked them:
How do you describe innovation in your career?
Steele: For me, innovation isn’t just about building something new, it’s about building something better. In my career, innovation looks like listening closely, seeing patterns others miss and creating solutions that feel personal, intuitive and scalable. Whether it’s through technology that connects brands to real people or reimagining how communities shape commerce, I aim to innovate in ways that are both disruptive and deeply human. Innovation is also about asking better questions: What if it looked different? What if it worked better for women, parents or people outside the coasts? That curiosity is at the heart of everything I build.
How do you define innovation as an organization?
Inman: Most people think of conservation as this stagnant ideal. You’re preserving and reverting things back to their natural state. But we really see innovation within the conservation space as finding new ways to accelerate the pace of conservation. We do this by taking advantage of unlikely partnerships, really providing listening and finding new ways to make things happen. We don’t assume that we know the answer to things, we really want to listen to our partners to hear what they’re saying and to find new ways to make a big impact.
Get inspired at our innovationIOWA event July 10
Innovation Conversations: Celebrate the journeys of Iowa innovators
For innovators, answering the question “How did you get there?” entails much more than a step-by-step timeline. To them, it might mean, “How did you find success and support along the way? How did you navigate challenges or failure? Why do you choose to do this work?” At our annual innovationIOWA event, we will explore these questions and more with entrepreneurial Iowans tackling unanswered problems and creating an ecosystem where innovation is possible. Come hear the inspiring stories and lessons of Iowa innovators in Q&A-style conversations and get your copy of the 2025 innovationIOWA Magazine. Plus, you’ll help honor this year’s innovationENTREPRENEUR and innovationLEADER award winners.
Speakers:
- Billie Asmus, founder and CEO, Repaint Studios
- Jose Venales, director of credit and lending, Iowa Center for Economic Success
- Katherine Cota, director of Lamberti Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, Buena Vista University