DES MOINES, Iowa (May 2, 2017) – Todd Skokan, president and chief executive officer at BirdDogHR, has been presented the first-ever Joe Rosenfield Award by Next Level Ventures. The award was presented at the Next Level Ventures Annual Meeting on April 27 at the Des Moines Embassy Club, Des Moines, Iowa.
The Joe Rosenfield Award was presented to Skokan for his transformational leadership at BirdDogHR. Skokan re-engineered BirdDogHR’s business model from being transaction-based into a hyper-growth Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Next Level Ventures recognized Skokan’s ability to identify and solve the market’s need for a more integrated and easy-to-use suite of products. Craig Ibsen, managing principal at Next Level Ventures, said Skokan has exemplified Rosenfield’s humility practicing servant leadership principles by concurrently making his employees, customers, investors and growth top priority.
“Skokan is a visionary that is taking talent management to completely underserved industries. His vision helps those companies reinvent themselves to compete for, win and retain top talent,” Ibsen said. “Serving his team first, Todd promotes a culture of listening within his organization.”
Exemplifying Joe Rosenfield’s legacy of leadership and ability to drive financial success among his peers, Skokan has built BirdDogHR’s non-stop growth, with sales increasing 285 percent over the past three years. The company has also cultivated an unprecedented customer retention rate of 95 percent.
Chris Monek, senior executive director of business development at the Associated General Contractors of America, said Skokan’s recent award can be attributed to his willingness to lead through selfless contribution to his team. Monek said, “BirdDogHR has been a wonderful affinity program provider for our organization over the past 3 years. The company has a strong leader at its helm who believes in the value of employee engagement and the modern methods to maximize it. His technology savvy and strong leadership benefits employees, customer, partners and investors alike.”
From visionary awards to web-based crowdsourcing Skokan is making his mark. At the end of Q1 2017, Skokan had a 94-percent approval rating on Owler surpassing competitor CEOs by as much as 30 points. Owler is a community-based business insights platform that has quickly become the second largest active business community, surpassed only by LinkedIn. In addition, followers find his approval ratings are consistently high on Glassdoor. Also, in 2016 Skokan was named a finalist in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year and CEO of the Year by the Technology Association of Iowa.
