Nearly 300 business leaders throughout California came to the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco last Thursday evening, April 10, to support BizWorld.org and honor Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, executive chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated, at our third annual awards dinner. Twice a year BizWorld.org comes together to celebrate the impact our programs are having in kids' lives around the world and honor one of today’s innovative leaders who serve as role models to children.

The evening kicked off with guests networking at a cocktail reception. We also asked some of the business leaders in attendance to give today’s kids/tomorrow’s entrepreneurs some business tips. We captured those tips on video, which you can check out here on our Facebook and Instagram.

Guests then came to the ballroom for the dinner program and were welcomed by the night’s emcee, KTVU reporter and co-anchor Heather Holmes.

BizWorld.org CEO Thais Rezende gave a keynote address, impressing the crowd with BizWorld.org’s accomplishments and goals for the future. She also announced a partnership with GoAnimate, which is providing the online animation platform for the new BizMovie® 2.0 program. A fun highlight of the evening was the animated video from GoAnimate announcing their partnership with BizWorld.org. You can watch that video here and find out more about BizMovie 2.0 by watching this video. Thais also introduced the teachers and students who are featured in the BizMovie video and were attending the event. They were thrilled to be able to participate and have their photo taken with Dr. Jacobs!

Event chair and CEO of Tibco, Vivek Ranadivé presented BizWorld.org’s Education Innovator Award to Dr. Paul Jacobs. Vivek gave a personal, heartwarming speech about Dr. Jacobs, talking about their early days together at Qualcomm as well as how they came to be co-owners of the Sacramento Kings NBA team. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Jacobs talked about the importance of kids learning technology at an early age and mentioned that “there are more cell phones in the world today than toothbrushes!”

The evening wrapped up with a raffle for a beautiful diamond necklace worth $5,000 donated by BizWorld.org board member Stephen Silver of Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry.

We’d like to thank everyone who attended the event, as well as the sponsors who made the event possible.