CHAPEL HILL - Finalists have been announced for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce's Business Excellence Awards. And Kristen Smith, the chamber's vice president for advocacy and engagement, says the awards are a way to highlight companies that are innovative and impact the community.

"This is a unique opportunity for businesses to either nominate themselves or nominate their peers for different awards and different categories," Smith says.

Smith says many of the awards touch on the importance of the UNC system on the North Carolina economy.

"It's not just an economic driver for our local community but our state as a whole," Smith says. "This is just an opportunity to recognize some of the businesses that have been birthed by our first public university but also have chosen to stay here and grow jobs in our local community."

One of the Business Excellence Award categories is University Born Business but other categories include UNC-related companies such as the Innovation Award and the Community Impact Award. And Smith says both for-profit and non-profit companies are a part of the list of finalists.

"We encouraged any enterprise, whether non-profit or not, to nominate themselves or to be nominated for the Business Excellence Awards," she says.

Included in the list of awards is two new categories: Young Professional of the Year and Business Woman of the Year.

"We got several nominations and we really wanted to recognize all of these individuals," she says. "These are not finalists but individuals who received a nomination."

Community members can vote for the finalists at carolinachamber.org/BEAS. Voting closes May 6 and the award ceremony is May 28 at PlayMakers Repertory Company.