Washington Capitals owner and Monumental Sports and Entertainment’s founder, chairman, and CEO Ted Leonsis was honored as CEO of the year by the Washington Business Journal on Monday.
Past winners of CEO of the Year have included Matt Kelly, CEO of JBG Smith Properties, and Arne Sorenson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Marriott International.
The criteria for naming the CEO of the year, according to WBJ’s Editor-in-Chief Douglas Fruehling, is “pretty simple: It must be someone who moves his or her company or organization — and the region and its economy — forward in a positive way during the year.”
With the Stanley Cup victory and other contributions to the DC community, Leonsis did just that.
When Leonsis discussed what winning the Stanley Cup meant to the DC Metro area with NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti, he noted that it was the whole region pulling together that made the win special:
We want to make this big, lifelong memory and just have this common positive touchpoint between families and friends and moms and dads. So that to me has been the most self-satisfying thing, having people come up to me and hugging.
It’s not, ‘You won the Stanley Cup.’ It was, ‘We did this together.’
In addition to the Stanley Cup win, Leonsis opened the Entertainment and Sports Venue at St. Elizabeths, the new home of the Washington Mystics and the Washington Wizards’ practice facility.
The Washington Valor, DC’s Arena Football League team, won the Arena Bowl as well.
Leonsis’s contributions aren’t limited to sports. In October, “he helped open the Georgetown Venture Lab, a 90-person space designated specifically for the school’s alumni-led companies. He donated $1.5 million to the cause,” according to WBJ.
Leonsis will be honored at the Watergate Hotel on December 6 at the 2018 CEO of the Year and C-Suite Awards.
Headline photo: @TedLeonsis
