PRESS RELEASE
DATE: April 6, 2022
BETHESDA ENTREPRENEUR WINS INDUSTRY AWARD
Bethesda’s Cheryl DiFrank was a recipient of the inaugural Rising Tide Award, given on March 26, 2022 during The Photo Managers’ 10th annual conference in Denver, Colorado.
Cheryl is a member of The Photo Managers, the trade association for the rapidly growing field of photo management. One of the core beliefs of The Photo Managers community is “a rising tide lifts all boats.” This means that the great work that our members do has a positive impact on both colleagues in the organization as well as on the photo management industry as a whole.
The Photo Managers created the Rising Tide Award to honor each year three of the association’s members who’ve shared their expertise, innovated, taken risks, and moved the needle for the photo management community. Nominated by their peers, the winners embody these principles:
• We are collaborative rather than competitive.
• We take pride in adhering to a strong code of ethics and industry standards.
• We believe in exceeding expectations.
• We share generously of our knowledge and experiences for the benefit of the community.
• We recognize this is a growing and changing industry and we share new ideas with an abundance mentality.
The Photo Managers Founder & CEO, Cathi Nelson notes, “It was my pleasure to give this award to Cheryl and to share comments from colleagues, such as: “[Cheryl] is one of the most giving people online that isn’t looking for promotion or getting something from her support/mentorship. She is a true expert in my opinion and truly is what we promote and enjoy about belonging to the TPM community.”
Hearing friends and family talk about how they worried about losing all their family photos, but had no idea what to do with them, Cheryl founded My Memory File in 2016 to help families organize and preserve their photos so they can share and enjoy them. “I am honored to be recognized by my peers with this award. It is so rewarding to know that I am contributing to a community that helps families preserve their precious photo memories.”
To learn more about The Photo Managers, visit www.thephotomanagers.com. Visit Cheryl’s website at www.mymemoryfile.com.
“For a very long time I had been overwhelmed by the idea of organizing my 13 years worth of pictures. I hadn’t printed anything in 12 years much less put them in albums, had used multiple cameras, multiple photo-importing programs, and multiple computers over that time, and hated the idea of sitting at my computer for hours figuring out what to do. Enter Cheryl DiFrank, someone I heard about through a local listserv. She came to my house and scanned all our computers, pulling every .jpg file onto an external drive. When she came back a few weeks later, she had organized all the photos by year (based on data embedded in the digital files) and deleted all the duplicates. It doesn’t matter how disorganized you are! She also selected the best, most representative pictures from each year. My hope is that I can take things the final distance and actually put the pictures into albums. But I’m sure she would do that too if my powers of procrastination and avoidance get the better of me. Cheryl is a real pleasure to work with, super positive and totally non-judgmental. I highly recommend her.”
“Dear Cheryl, Just wanted you to know that my husband sat down yesterday evening and looked through all three albums. He is not a person who gives compliments easily. In most cases he only will use the word “fine” when showing his approval about something met often by the rest of us with eye rolling. He looked at the albums slowly remembering so many fond family and friends memories and laughing while looking through the construction book. After looking through all three books he just said one word...perfect. I thought you’d like to know.”