June 15, 2009
The 31st APALA Achievement Awards Gala
Back to basic elegance.
Black tie was the standard for the APALA’s 31st Annual Achievement Awards gala, held this year at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. And the emphasis was on a simple elegant style, reflected in the arrangement of pillars, flowers and posters to table the settings. This year’s event celebrated the careers of nine outstanding women in the print industry that exemplifies the diversity and richness of the talent within our industry.
Nikki Freadhoff of Deutsch LA won the Traffic Award over stiff competition from Melina Hicks of Skechers and Angela Montoya, from Saatchi & Saatchi LA. Nikki came to Project Management through the influence of her father who suggested she change her career from elementary education to production because of her persuasive personality. This comment inspired her to acquire an internship with Deutsch in her senior year of college and to explore traffic and project management opportunities with several agencies, before her return to Deutsch and the Saturn account.
Melanie Halpern received the President’s Award for her outstanding contributions to the APALA for the past five years, working on many of their high-profile events.
During her career she has spent time at Petersen Publishing, Walt Disney Corporate Print Services and for the last ten years as Corporate Procurement Manager at Sony. Congratulations to Melanie for her creativity and support over the years as Vice President and Secretary to the APALA Board of Directors, and her tireless energy in putting on the first PrintSC event.
It was a tight race in the Production category, with Arline Vezina winning over Brenda Thomas of Princess Cruises and Kim Nunez of Skechers. Arline is a long- time veteran of the Los Angeles advertising community. She has served as VP, Director of Print Production for Marsteller, which was later owned by Young & Rubicam and called HDM, to VP, Director of Print Production at Grey Advertising. Now she enjoys working at Pulsar Advertising in Beverly Hills specializing in transit accounts.
Paurvi Trivedi received the Industry Spirit Award for her “can-do spirit” she has exhibited in her nine years of supporting the print industry while serving on the APALA Board of Directors and her tireless support of the print medium through her work with Maritz and her own business, Curved Space Creative.
The final award for Lifetime Achievement was presented to Lorraine Alper- Kramer of Saatchi & Saatchi LA. Lorraine was recognized for her leadership and mentoring skills as well as her passion for quality and new technology. She has been a member of the Kodak Advisory Board, and has been a presenter at Seybold in NYC. Lorraine has served as Senior Vice President, Director of Creative Services at BBDO/LA and Director of Print Services for Saatchi & Saatchi LA.
For the first time in the history of the awards, the APALA reserved a couple of sponsor tables for unemployed/retired members of the organization. This year’s table sponsors were Anderson Printing, ColorGraphics, Color Image Printing, Continental Colorcraft, Digital2Visual, Effective Graphics, Lithographix, PIASC, Primary Color, Schawk, Southern California Graphics, UltraGraphics and XYZ.
The committee for this year’s event included Bob Schock, Chair, John Rice and Johanna Leovey co-chairs; Veronica Thompson and Miny Chavez of TAC. Also, credit goes to John Beard and G2 for printing the program and Ron Hirt and Primary Color for the nominee posters and printing the menu. The stage pillars where donated and produced by Gabe Lakatosh and everyone at D2V.
Congratulations to all the winners and many thanks to everyone that worked on this year’s event. It was a shining celebration of what is best in our LA Graphics Communications Industry and the marketing advertising community as a whole.