Emerald Textiles CEO bags Entrepreneur of the Year award

“It is an honor to be selected as Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. I’m very pleased to be part of this group of highly regarded CEOs who are focused on the success of their businesses and giving back to our community” said Tom Gildred. “I would like to congratulate all the winners and thank them for their contributions to the city of San Diego and our economy.”

Operational for less than two years, Emerald Textiles has quickly become a leading provider of healthcare linen to Southern California. The company serves more than 70% of the hospital beds in San Diego, delivers over 1 million pieces of laundry each week and processes almost 35 million pounds a year. Emerald operates the most innovative and environmentally responsible commercial healthcare laundry facility in the United States and saves the county of San Diego more than 700,000 therms of natural gas and approximately 40,000,000 gallons of water each year.

Emerald received the SDG&E Showcase Award and the Savings by Design Award in recognition for its advanced design and extreme energy efficiency. Savings by Design is an award created by the California Public Utilities Commission and San Diego Gas & Electric.

Now in its 26th year, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program has honored the inspirational leadership of such entrepreneurs as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Michael Dell of Dell Inc., Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Fred Smith of FedEx, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Richard Schulze of Best Buy, Andrew Mason of Groupon, Mindy Grossman of HSN, Inc., Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and many more.

Emerald Textiles