Lifeway Foods CEO wins Gold Stevie award

MORTON GROVE - Lifeway Foods Inc. President and CEO Julie Smolyansky has been named the winner of a Gold Stevie Award at the 18th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

Smolyansky won in the Female Executive of the Year - Consumer Products category for businesses with fewer than 2,500 employees.

The Stevie Awards honor women executives, entrepreneurs, employees and the companies they run worldwide. The judging committee praised Smolyansky's work growing, evolving and navigating the company through a global pandemic, while continuing to support the communities around her. They also applauded her focus, determination and compassion as a leader, highlighting her success that started when she became CEO of Lifeway Foods in 2002 at the age of 27, making her the youngest female CEO of a publicly held firm at the time.

Lifeway Foods is a leading world supplier of cultured dairy products known as kefir and organic kefir.

"Women bring compassion and gut intuition to the workplace in ways that improve company performance and the overall environment, which is especially important in times of uncertainty and crisis," Smolyansky said. "I am humbled to know my team feels so positively about my leadership, and I share this award with our entire organization and all the communities we serve across the world in the spirit of improving wellness."