Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy will present its 11th annual Odyssey Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, March 11, at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The program will begin at 11:30 a.m. Individual tickets are available at CGLAonline.com.
The Odyssey keynote speaker will be Vanessa O’Brien, an accomplished mountaineer and explorer. A citizen of both the U.S. and Great Britain, O’Brien was the first American and British woman to scale K2, the world’s second-tallest mountain.
Honored in 2018 as Explorer of the Year by the Scientific Exploration Society, O’Brien is one of eight women to complete the Explorer’s Grand Slam, an international quest that challenges adventurers to summit the tallest peak on each of the seven continents and to reach the north and south poles.
O’Brien not only completed the Explorer’s Grand Slam, she finished it in a record-setting 11 months.
CGLA will also honor Edna Varner as the recipient of the 2020 Founder’s Award. Varner is an educator, administrator and community leader whose career in education spans more than 40 years. She has been involved with CGLA since its beginning.
The Odyssey Awards Luncheon also will celebrate student achievement with the announcement of the 2020 recipients of the Rising Star and Shining Star awards. These recognitions spotlight young women who are “exhibiting attributes associated with academic and personal success,” reads the CGLA website.
The chair of the 2020 Odyssey luncheon is Cindy Lee, founder and chief executive officer of LYNC Logistics. A local entrepreneur, Lee established LYNC Logistics in 2014. In 2019, the Women President’s Organization and Capital One ranked LYNC rthird on its list of the 50 fastest growing women-owned companies.
Source: Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy