W2O Group founder/CEO Jim Weiss will be honored with the Individual Achievement SABRE Award in New York on May 1, at the 19th edition of the North American SABRE Awards.

Weiss founded the W2O Group — which was then known as the WeissComm Group — as a one-person healthcare consultancy that has since experienced one of the most remarkable growth trajectories in the business. W2O has catapulted from having less than $10m in revenue in 2006 to exceeding $140m this year.

The group is now an international marketing communications network that includes three companies, 13 offices and more than 650 people. The firm’s business has transformed from a healthcare speciality into one of the industry’s most sophisticated analytics and digital companies. Among the most significant turning points for W2O was in 2016 when it sold a stake to Mountaingate Capital, followed by a series of acquisitions to make its long-standing market differentiator — digital analytics — even sharper and more disciplined.

Weiss is known for challenging the status quo and for a relentless sense of competition, while also maintaining involvement with clients and knowing the firm’s employees. Last November marked five years since Weiss, along with his wife Audra, established the W2O Newhouse Center for Social Commerce at their alma mater Syracuse University. Since 2016, Weiss has partnered with the Lagrant Foundation on a first-of-its-kind healthcare communications fellowship targeting ethnic minorities.

“I’m the first to acknowledge that maintaining the growth trajectory we’ve experienced will be challenging and difficult,” Weiss said last month. “It means we must be resilient, collaborative, committed, and open-minded. But make no mistake, we have no intention of rushing to the middle.”

“The company has demonstrated an enviable rate of consistent, sustained year-over-year revenue growth since its founding, and has built strong partnerships with its client base of leading global companies and brands,” said Bruce Rogers, managing director of Mountaingate, at the time of the sale.

Prior to founding W2O Group, Weiss led communications at Heartport, helped establish marketing communications at Sanofi and started his career at Genentech.