FEATURING THE BEST OF THE BEST
OUTSTANDING CORPORATE INNOVATOR
Congratulations to the 2024 OCI Winners!
Meet the Award Recipients
Gustavo Lopez
MSA Safety
Vice President, Product Strategy and Pricing
Gustavo Lopez serves as Vice President of Product Strategy and Pricing. In this role, he leads the product marketing and pricing organizations, as well as the company’s Global Product Leadership Council, which focuses on aligning the company’s product strategies across the entire portfolio to drive efficiency within the organization. Previously, Gustavo served in various roles of increasing responsibility across the company’s software, connected technology and detection product and solution segments, and he led the integration of Sierra Monitor. He joined MSA Safety in 2004.
Tom Salapow
MSA Safety
Executive Director, Global R&D
Tom leads a global team of Engineers and technical associates in design centers around the world, including Pittsburgh, California, Germany, France, U.K., China and Brazil. Tom’s previous roles at MSA include Global Business Director and Engineering Director for the Fixed Gas and Flame Detection business, which included the oversight of the global business and leadership of people and teams in the U.S., South America, Germany, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Tom has also served in many other Marketing and Engineering leadership roles, and as a Project Manager and Design Engineer in his 30 years at MSA. He has experience in engineering, product development, project management, business strategy, portfolio development, leadership, and global business management. Tom began his career as a design engineer at General Electric in Erie, Pennsylvania. Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Gannon University and an M.B.A. from Duquesne University.
Jodie Brinkerhoff
DFW Airport
Vice President of Innovation
Jodie Brinkerhoff is Vice President of Innovation at DFW Airport and leads the Innovation team’s efforts to investigate, ideate, incubate and implement new products and solutions for the airport. Her team works across the enterprise, partnering with core business units and bringing in emerging technologies as enablers to solve problems. She is also responsible for development of innovation skill building and culture initiatives for employees.
Jodie is passionate about understanding new trends and emerging technologies, inspiring transformational corporate culture, and building what’s right for the customer. She has a love of work with both start-up ventures and corporate enterprises — with focus on issues of mobility, biometrics, AI, automation, sustainability and new ventures.
Prior to joining DFW, Jodie was the North American lead for Mastercard Labs in New York City. From 2010 – 2016, Jodie was SVP at Fuel Cycle, a software-as-a-service start up. In her early career, Jodie sold consulting services for global research providers, including Mintel Group Ltd and Harris Interactive (owners of The Harris Poll.)
Jodie is a founding Advisory Board member of the industry group, Women Leading Travel & Hospitality, serves on the Board of Advisors for the Jim McNatt Institute for Logistics Research at the University of North Texas, and is a Vice Chairman of the Facilities and Technical Services Committee of the American Association of Airport Executives.
Jodie holds a BA in communications from Loyola University in Maryland and MBA in marketing from the University of San Francisco.
Past OCI Winners & Why OCI was Valuable to Their Company
Celebrating the best corporate innovators!
A spotlight for this year’s Inspire Innovation Conference will be the presentation of the 2024 Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award. This session is always a keystone for the conference as you will have the opportunity to learn about best practices in new product innovation from one of the most innovative companies in the world.
This year, a deserving, forward-thinking company will join the prestigious ranks of previous winners, including recent winners:
2023: Cargill; Novelis
2022: Hershey
2021: 3M
2020: Church & Dwight; Medtronic
2019: The Gorilla Glue Company; Porex Corporation (Filtration Group)
About OCI Award:
For over three decades, the Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) Award by the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) has stood as the pinnacle of recognition for industry trailblazers who are reshaping the landscape of innovation.
The OCI Award selection process has successfully identified companies that consistently generate and harness long-term value through exceptional product and service innovation. Winning companies demonstrate well defined new product development practices and processes which have contributed to their innovation success. Open to companies worldwide, the award epitomizes innovation excellence.
Finalists for the 2024 OCI Award will be formally announced in August.
Past OCI Winners & Why OCI Was Valuable to Their Company
