CLE-BEE Corporate Spelling Bee

This event would not have been possible without the support of The Lubrizol Corporation and KeyBank. We just want to say thank you for sponsoring this great event!

To prepare for the bee a number of the teams had mini-bees to find their team members

We were very lucky to have some great people involved with the spelling bee! Chief Meteorologist Betsy Kling from WKYC was our celebrity Emcee! A big thank you to her for helping us make the event a great one!

A few weeks before the big event we had some fantastic volunteers help us rehearse

After months of work and preparation September 8th finally arrived!

Our teams arrived ready and excited to compete to become the spelling champion!

Some teams really got into the spirit and dressed up for the event!

September 8th was also International Literacy Day. The Corporate Spelling Bee was not only a fun fundraising event but also an event to raise awareness about illiteracy and what can be done to fight this crisis.

The 1st annual CLE-BEE Corporate Spelling Bee started with a welcome and a few speeches.

Betsy Kling welcomed everyone and read the rules for the night’s competition.

Our Executive Director, Bob Paponetti, welcomed everyone and spoke about the significance of the event and International Literacy Day.

Our Board President, Beth Grove, was next to speak. She spoke about the history of The Literacy Cooperative and the work we do as well as premiering a short video about our work.

Mayor Frank Jackson shared his own struggles with illiteracy and spoke about how important literacy is to an individual and community. He also presented a proclamation to our Executive Director

County Executive Armond Budish addressed the importance of early education and how “together we learn, together we thrive.”

Once the speeches were over it was time for competition to begin. Swarm one was the finance teams which included: Ciuni & Panichi Inc., Corrigan Krause CPAs/DMS Management Solutions, KeyBank, Newmark Grubb Frank Knight, Oswald Companies, and United Way of Greater Cleveland.
The winner of swarm one was Oswald Companies

The buzz was so great that we started to trend #2 on Twitter and stayed in that spot throughout the whole event!

Next up was swarm 2, the Legal Teams. This swarm included: Baker Hostetler, Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, Frantz Ward, Thompson Hine, Ulmer & Berne LLP, and The City Club of Cleveland.
The winner of swarm 2 was Baker Hostetler

Swarm 3 was the Corporate Teams and they consisted of: Eaton Corporation, Goldfarb Weber Creative Media, Cleveland Leadership Center, Lincoln Electric, The Lubrizol Corporation and WKYC Channel 3.

The winner of swarm 3 was Eaton Corporation!

The final qualifying swarm was the Community Teams: Broadway Slavic Village MyCom/P-16 (Supported by Third Federal Foundation), Case Elementary, CMSD (supported by Jones Day), Cleveland Metropolitan School District (sponsored by KeyBank), Cleveland State University (Sponsored by Lubrizol), Cuyahoga Community College and Northeast Ohio ABLE.

The winner of the Community swarm was Cuyahoga Community College.

After a short break it was time for the final four to compete. The four teams competing to become the 1st CLE-BEE spelling champions were Baker Hostetler, Eaton Corporation, Cuyahoga Community College and Oswald Companies.

Betsy Kling read the rules for the final round, which was a sudden death round. One wrong answer and you were out.

No event is complete without a few surprises though. The Honorable John. J. Russo called for a change of the rules and overruled the final round rules. It was no longer sudden death, but two-strike elimination, as it was for the earlier qualifying rounds.

After some tough words and competitive spelling, Baker Hosteler emerged the victors of the 1st annual Literacy Cooperative CLE-BEE, Corporate Spelling Bee!!!

It was a great night, full of some fantastic teams who put their all into the competition. We want to thank every team that was a part of this memorable event

The CLE-BEE Corporate Spelling Bee was an event to bring the community together to not only have fun but to also to raise awareness about the importance of literacy. We hope everyone had a fun night and we thank you for your continued support in helping us to fight the illiteracy crisis in our community!