GMDC honors Bivona with 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award
PHOENIX — GMDC honored longtime member Joseph Bivona, VP customer development at Time Inc. Retail, with the organization’s 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award here at GMDC Health Beauty Wellness 2015. The announcement came at Saturday night’s Evening with the Board of Directors Reception and Dinner, where one of Bivona’s daughters, Janine Nyquist, her husband Bryce and newborn daughter Nora were on hand to surprise him after he was presented with the award.
“When you’re in the audience you never know, one day you may be up here,” Bivona said, adding that he expected the award to go to former GMDC president and CEO Dave McConnell, and thanking current president and CEO Peter Spear. “Peter, everybody thank you very much. I always tell my children: always be hungry, but humble, and believe me tonight I am humble. I appreciate everything, and you can’t do it alone. You got to do it with folks like yourselves. Thank you very much.”
Bivona was honored with a 20-minute video chronicling his life from his childhood in Port Chester, N.Y., to his education and career, which began at Mobil before he moved to Coca-Cola and eventually settled at Time Inc. Retail. There he has forged relationships with retailers and regional grocery chains through his work with GMDC, where he currently serves on the GM advisory board.
All the while, Bivona has helped to raise a family — Nyquist, her sister Jaime Baehler and brother Joseph “JJ” Bivona — while instilling humor into life, working to grow his company’s retail footprint and building strong personal and professional relationships with retailers.
“I can’t imagine Time Inc. being as successful as we’ve been in the retail industry without a relationship like GMDC,” Time Inc. Retail CEO and president Rich Jacobsen said in the video. “We never had a relationship in the drug industry, and we now do and Joe’s helped us with that.”
For people who have worked with Bivona, like Colgate-Palmolive customer development director Peter Thompsen, it is Bivona’s ability to cultivate personal relationships with colleagues that is a large driver of his and his company’s success.
“If you look at some of the places where Time has been very successful — in some strong regional grocery chains, some of the customers that we have in GMDC as members — Joe built the relationships to build the business, and they’ve benefited both on a personal and professional level,” Thompsen said.
“When I think about what Joe has done, there is no other industry person who has dedicated more time, both personally and from a company resource perspective than Joe has,” Ray Schrumpf, C&S Wholesale’s SVP of non-perishable procurement, said in the video. “And I think that’s the epitome of what it takes to win the Lifetime Achievement Award with GMDC.”