The 2026 Global BRM Community Excellence Award Winners
Every year, the global BRM community comes together to celebrate the individuals and organizations who embody excellence in the BRM role, discipline, capability, and philosophy.
This year’s winners of the Global BRM Community Excellence Awards were nominated by their own peers — a reflection of the respect and impact they’ve earned within the community.
The Global Excellence Awards represent the highest honor in the worldwide BRM community, recognizing individuals and teams whose vision, dedication, and leadership have advanced the practice of Business Relationship Management. These are the people who prove what BRM can deliver: real value, stronger collaboration, and meaningful organizational change.
This past year has brought no shortage of BRM excellence in action. Leaders and teams have pushed past convention, built partnerships that matter, and delivered solutions with a lasting impact on their organizations and the people they serve. Whether through smarter processes or stronger cross-functional relationships, their work proves that BRM drives measurable outcomes while building trust, accountability, and growth along the way.
This year’s nominees and award recipients embody the highest ideals of BRM. They live the discipline through purpose-driven action — empowering others, making a difference, and reminding us that BRM isn’t just about managing relationships. It’s about shaping the future, building community, and creating impact that reaches far beyond any one person or team.
In honoring these achievements, we’re celebrating more than the awards themselves — we’re celebrating the spirit of excellence that defines the global BRM community. Their example pushes all of us to raise the bar, challenge ourselves, and keep building a world where purposeful relationships and collaborative leadership drive real, lasting value.
These stories are more than milestones — they’re inspiration. They show what’s possible when BRM transforms organizations, strengthens communities, and helps people reach their fullest potential. Above all, these awards reaffirm what we already know to be true: dedication matters, connection matters, and extraordinary things happen when people unite around a shared purpose.
Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees and winners — your work is advancing Business Relationship Management around the world, and your passion is what makes the global BRM community truly outstanding.
Please join us in congratulating the following winners for their achievements in advancing the BRM community!
Click on the winners name to view their LinkedIn profile and send them a congratulations message.
Community Impact Award
The Community Impact Award recognizes overall outstanding contributions to the single, global BRM community and discipline through the last year.
This could include contributions through working groups, outreach, ambassador efforts, involvement in BRM community leadership, or championing the BRM discipline through efforts like podcasts, contributors network or otherwise. This award recognizes a positive and significant effort made in support of advancing BRM.
Leanne McGiveron, MBRM
IT Business Relationship Manager, Enterprise Community Partners
For 28 years, Leanne McGiveron built her career at Purdue University, where she introduced Business Relationship Management to the organization, led the BRM team, and embedded its practices into how the university operates. Her impact reaches far beyond Purdue: she’s been a driving force behind Higher Education BRM groups, mentoring others navigating the same journey she once led.
Today, Leanne leads BRM adoption at Community Enterprise Partners, continuing to meet with community members and guide others forward. Her commitment isn’t a moment in time — it’s a sustained investment in the people who make up the global BRM community.
BRM Team Award
The BRM Team Award recognizes BRM teams who have made an impact within their organization.
This award is for teams who are able to articulate value and impact on business purpose. A truly impactful team works to actively engage their community while striving for continued learning.
This BRM Team exemplifies excellence through their dedication and commitment to on-going growth and development.
Communications and Information Technology Department, BRM Team
This BRM Team exemplifies excellence through their dedication and commitment to ongoing growth and development. The BRM program within Miami-Dade County’s Communications and Information Technology Department has set a shining example of what true Business Relationship Management teamwork looks like — and they’ve proven it isn’t a one-time achievement. As multi-year recipients of this award, the team has demonstrated that their impact is not a moment but a sustained practice, year after year raising the bar for what BRM excellence looks like in the public sector.
The BRM Team Award honors groups that embody shared ownership, trust, and purposeful evolution — qualities that the Miami-Dade County BRM team demonstrates every day in their work across the organization. This recognition highlights their sustained commitment to advancing the BRM discipline and the powerful impact of working together, year over year, toward a greater mission.
Trailblazer Award: Purpose in Evolution
The Trailblazer Purpose in Evolution Award recognizes the belief that BRM is everywhere through relationships. The winner of this award must have demonstrated a significant impact through deliberate and effective collaboration with their peers. This award celebrates those who have embraced BRM principles to create a culture of shared ownership, measurable results, and shared success.
Mohammed Aarif Shaikh
Business Relationship Manager, Ali Zaid Al-Quraishi & Brothers
Winning for the second consecutive year, has built his impact on collaboration as a discipline in itself. As a Manager at Ali Zaid Al-Quraishi & Brothers, he shapes IT demand and aligns IT strategy with business goals by fostering stakeholder relationships and prioritizing demands that drive real business value. As an active member of the EMEA community, he extends that same collaborative spirit beyond his own organization, continuing to demonstrate what shared success looks like year after year.
Sebastian Moore
Business Relationship Manager, H&M Treasury / Police Digital Service
Sebastian lives out the belief that BRM is everywhere through relationships in how he shapes public sector adoption of emerging technology. Rather than treating governance and technology delivery as separate from the human side of institutions, Sebastian works in the space between policy, technology, and people — writing and speaking regularly on digital strategy, responsible AI, and business relationship management. Through his BRM newsletter and articles, he extends that collaborative spirit beyond his own organization, sharing knowledge that helps peers across the community build the same culture of shared success.
Trailblazer Award: Up and Coming BRM
The Trailblazer Up and Coming BRM Award. This award recognizes individuals who have entered the BRM career path within the last one to two years. They are seeking involvement in the BRM community, learning opportunities from existing knowledge and are advancing their network through mentee relationships with other BRMs.
They are truly blazing a trail forward with advancing their BRM career and knowledge! Let’s see who the winners are…
Luiz Santana
Business Relationship Manager, UK Health Security Agency
Luiz Santana works in the gap between good decisions and actual results — where strategy stalls and technology exists without agreement on what problem it’s solving. In just a short time in the field, he’s already made an outsized impact: designing a demand governance framework at UKHSA that shifted technology from order-taker to genuine partner, unifying CRM procurement across four independent business groups, and leading a cross-functional response that protected his organisation from six-figure financial exposure.
Beyond his own practice, Luiz has contributed articles to the BRM Institute, sharing his perspective with BRMs earlier in their journeys — exactly the community engagement this award celebrates.
Executive Award
The Executive Award recognizes a C-Level professional who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership and support for BRMs within their organizations. The recipient of this award is a strong advocate for the BRM discipline, both within their organization and the broader community. This individual stands as a champion for BRMs, using their voice to advance the BRM capability in their organization.
Tyler Brown
Director IT Strategy, Advent Health
Tyler Brown’s advocacy for BRM is grounded in firsthand experience: from 2019 to 2023, he served as a Senior IT BRM before stepping into his current role leading Strategy and Technology at AdventHealth in Maitland, FL. Having walked in a BRM’s shoes, he understands what the discipline needs from leadership to succeed — and has used his voice and influence to champion it from the executive table.
Tyler Brown embodies what this award was created to honor: a leader who doesn’t just support BRM from a distance, but champions it with the credibility of someone who has lived it.
The Arnie Award
The Arnie Award recipient represents sustained commitment to going above and beyond to be involved with the BRM community and assume leadership within their BRM practice, establish mentoring relationships with other BRMs, and set an example within the single, global BRM community in efforts to advance the BRM discipline in the world.
They are true leaders in the BRM space and embody the principles and tenets of Business Relationship Management.
What’s an Arnie?
Established in 2016, the Arnie was named after its first recipient, Arnie Wetherhill, who exemplified the qualities of an outstanding BRM.
This prestigious award is given to individuals who embody the spirit of true leadership, mentorship, and excellence in BRM.
Kip Fanta
Principal, Kip Fanta Group
Kip Fanta has spent his career proving that technology is never just an IT conversation — it’s a relationship conversation. As founder of the Kip Fanta Group, he has dedicated himself to strengthening the relationships, behaviors, and operating models that connect business leaders with the technology and shared services teams that serve them.
But what sets Kip apart — and what makes him so deserving of the Arnie — is the extent to which he has given that experience back to the BRM discipline itself. Contributing his time and expertise to the CBRM and BRMP knowledge development team, serving as a dedicated Knowledge Partner (KP) for many years, and remaining an active member of the KPN. Few people have shaped both the practice and the profession of BRM as consistently, or as generously, as he has.
His deep practitioner experience, decades of developing other leaders, and sustained, hands-on investment in advancing the BRM discipline for the community as a whole — that makes Kip Fanta a true embodiment of what the Arnie Award was created to recognize.