197 Austin pros in the running for Women in Business Awards

By Kathryn Hardison | Published by Austin Business Journal

[ARTICLE] Business icon Gay Gaddis celebrated with the Special Achievement Award by the Austin Business Journal along with a star-studded list of Central Texas honorees.

Almost 200 Central Texans are in the running for this year’s Women in Business Awards.

Finalists and winners, as selected by a judging panel of business leaders and former winners, will be unveiled at Austin Business Journal’s event at the JW Marriott. It is the 31st year of the program.

At the awards luncheon, ABJ will honor advertising and marketing maven Gay Gaddis, founder and former head of advertising agency T3, with the Special Achievement Award. After stints in communications and consulting, she worked at the William Lacy Agency in Austin in the early 1980s. She famously cashed out her IRA to start T3 in 1989 and grew it into the largest independent, female-owned ad agency in the U.S. before stepping down as CEO in 2019, when the company was acquired by LRW Group, now known as Material.

In addition to her marketing influence, Gaddis is known for supporting her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, where she has served on the board of the Texas Exes alumni group and on the Dean’s Advisory Council for the McCombs School of Business. She also runs the Women Who Mean Business program at the McCombs School and was inducted into the McCombs School Hall of Fame in 2020.

See the full list of honorees on the Austin Business Journal’s website.