Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined an annual Chicago Innovation Awards tradition Monday afternoon: ringing the closing bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York with the most recent batch of honorees.
A group meeting with the mayor — normally in Chicago — is one of the perks of winning an Innovation Award. This year, Emanuel met with winners over lunch in New York Monday ahead of the Nasdaq event.
He told Blue Sky he wants to help promote Chicago as a place to do business, hoping it will retain promising local companies and attract the additional offices and headquarters of others.
“Chicago has an incredible story to tell what’s going on in both the digital economy and entrepreneurship,” said Emanuel, who spoke at last year’s Innovation Awards ceremony. “We’re at a different place than we were four or five years ago.”
The ceremony was livestreamed on Nasdaq’s YouTube page. It was Emanuel’s first time ringing the bell with the Innovation Awards.
Chicago Innovation Awards said companies on hand to ring the bell would include Shoe Drop, Modobag, Blue1647, FourKites and Drivin, among others. See the full list of Innovation Awards winners here.
