Credera’s five core values are the foundation, or cornerstone, of who we are as a firm. We strive to live these values every day in how we interact with our clients, colleagues, and the community. They are embedded in the DNA of our company culture, and we love celebrating our people who bring these values to life.
Because of this, we have several awards that recognize outstanding employees who are living out the firm’s core values in an exemplary way. There are six awards in total. Each of the firm’s five core values (people first, tenacity, integrity, excellence, and humility) have an individual winner along with the one overall Cornerstone winner.
We are thrilled to announce the following as our 2022 Cornerstone Award winners:
Overall Cornerstone Award: Anna Grace Franklin, Architect, Dallas
People First: Grace Lee, Senior Manager, Dallas
Tenacity: Shani Rainey, Senior Consultant, Denver
Integrity: Simon Saugier, Principal Architect, Dallas
Excellence: Mike Morain, Principal Architect, Denver
Humility: Mario Borja, Senior Architect, Dallas
The following are several excerpts from peer nominations that highlight why each of these individuals won their respective awards.
Credera’s 2022 Cornerstone Awards Winners
Overall Cornerstone Winner: Anna Grace Franklin
The core values are our cornerstone.
"AG [Anna Grace] fosters a collaborative culture, is mindful of her people and their needs, strives for excellence, pushes through adversity with tenacity, and always strives for excellence."
"She was a team player at all times. When her teams were caught up, she worked nights and weekends to support other Crederians who were carrying heavy loads. This created an incredible sense of camaraderie..."
“I have been coaching Anna Grace for a few years now and have worked with her on a few projects. Having been at Credera for 9 years, I will say that Anna Grace is one of the best examples of Credera's overall core values I have had the pleasure of working with in the entirety of my tenure. She excels at them all. In my coaching sessions with her I often find I am learning and growing just in the way she interacts and while in theory I am coaching her, it really moves both ways and she helps me be better in how I approach things.”
People First: Grace Lee
What ‘people first’ means: We treat each person with value and care. We are kind with our words and actions, seeking understanding, so that everyone is authentically known. Individual differences bring strength.
“Grace is an incredible leader, teacher, and advocate. She works tirelessly with excellence, but always prioritizes the careers of her team over her own. She seeks opportunities to help others, spend time out of her busy schedule, and graciously invest in anyone she works with.”
“Grace thinks about others before herself and leads from behind. She gives credit to others as an instinct, and goes out of her way to lift people up. She constantly thinks about ways to engage her team in a fun, positive way and is acutely in tune to the feelings and goals of her team members.”
“Ever since the day I started at Credera, Grace has been a sense of warmth and inclusiveness. She is humble, kind, compassionate, empathetic, and selfless. Grace is the kind of person who walks into a room (or virtual Teams meeting!) and says, ‘Look at YOU!’… never ‘Look at ME!’. She celebrates people so well and cares about her team members as people, then coworkers. At every check-in, she asks me details about my life and I feel seen and known by her.”
Tenacity: Shani Rainey
What ‘tenacity’ means: We're focused on driving a program from strategy to successful completion. We address obstacles head-on with grit, curiosity, and a deep drive to make an impact.
“Shani has owned each workstream including the team, approach, design, technology direction, project execution, change management, stakeholder communications, and marketing aspects. Nothing slips past her.”
“Shani proactively fills gaps in the team by anticipating them and reaching out to get new people involved. I have no idea how she even knows these people or convinces them to participate, but it's part of her tenacity for sure. It might be a superpower.”
“Shani exemplifies the core value of tenacity by leading our team in creating Credera's first DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) and ERG (Employee Resource Group) portal pages. This effort involved coordination across all ERG leaders and DE&I stakeholders to understand their needs, build the features that address those needs, and organize the content in a way that will help these groups be visible to Crederians looking to get involved. In learning how to build out the internal portal page, Shani saw that some of the features that would best display content for DE&I and our ERGs would need to be custom made. This did not block Shani. She pulled in the right people to learn from and grew her knowledge of these web parts. She didn't allow the limitations of the page templates to cause her to settle for a lesser quality outcome. She pushed the team to challenge ourselves and do right by our ERGs and DE&I groups that add so much value to Credera.”
Integrity: Simon Saugier
What ‘integrity' means: We seek honesty and consistency with what we say and pledge our integrity with our actions. We do the right thing, even when no one is watching and no matter the cost.
“Simon instills values in his team on a daily basis, ensuring corners are not cut for speed, profit, or ease, but to work with rigor and do the right thing. He also puts in extended hours to assist the team, even delivering code critical to our project analysis on his own time. We won’t fail because Simon won’t let us fail, and he leads by example, which inspires me to rise to the occasion.”
“Simon is the most honest and even-keeled individual I may have ever professionally crossed paths with. When ran into staffing challenges on our project, Simon advocated for extending the project time to the client (it is a fixed fee engagement) to ensure the client's satisfaction was met. He is the Account Manager over one of our key clients, and they continuously call on Credera because of Simon. The client trusts Simon due to his integrity.”
“Simon has acted as a leader with utmost integrity in his approach to driving direction at one of our key clients. Simon frequently pushes forward his thinking, offers challenging questions, and states clearly where he stands. He is also unafraid to change his position when new or better information comes to light that would lead to a better outcome.”
Excellence: Mike Morain
What ‘excellence' means: We never try to "sell" a client on a perfect plan or solution, there’s no such thing. But we do take time to understand the real-world issues and apply our experience to achieve remarkable results.
“Even though Mike is the technical lead of a project of over 20 people, he is still quick to do ‘grunt work’ by coding prototypes of solutions, making code changes to fix issues, digging through code and logs to diagnose problems, and writing and executing scripts on servers. He does all of this with a very willing and positive attitude. Overall, Mike is one of the brightest and most pleasant people I have ever worked with, and I would love to have him as a leader on any project.”
“When I think of excellence demonstrated both internally here at Credera and externally at Credera - I think of Mike Morain. Mike makes hard decisions easy.”
“Mike has led the technical execution of our largest project at a global client with excellence across the board. He leads the client in often challenging conversations about complex technical issues or workflows and always to have a response to tough questions or a recommended solution to any problem that is brought up. He is always solution-oriented and comes up with creative ideas to solve difficult problems in an extremely complex system at one of the largest corporations in the world.”
Humility: Mario Borja
What ‘humility' means: In every decision we consider our clients' and colleagues' interests as more important than our own. When we are wrong, we own our part, learn from our mistakes, and work to rebuild confidence and trust.
“Mario will always be first to answer the hard questions, but whenever there is a moment to celebrate, he humbly steps aside and praises his teammates for their contributions to whatever success we have achieved.”
“Mario always shares success liberally and owns hardship, exemplifying humble leadership in ways that would place him among the best leaders I have ever worked with.”
“Mario recently was in a hotly contested call and thanks to his professional humility he was able to calmly hear the arguments of the opposing side, sought true understanding of the problem, and then slowly guided the conversation back on course to a mutually beneficial outcome. Mario's calm demeanor, humble approach, and articulate speech carried the day. His example in the cornerstone of humility will always be an example for others to emulate, and I am happy beyond words to have him as a teammate and leader on this initiative.”
Our Values Are Our Cornerstone
To our six winners, thank you for living out Credera’s core values. Your contribution to the team cannot be overstated. We are proud and immensely grateful to have you as members of the Credera family!
Interested in Working at Credera?
Are you seeking a career at a great workplace? We help both new and experienced professionals take the next bold step in their careers. If you are seeking a similar opportunity at a firm that truly lives out our values, we encourage you to check out our open opportunities.
To learn more about Credera, visit Our Firm page at Credera.com. Additionally, explore what our employees are saying candidly on Glassdoor.com.
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