Formerly an aspiring singer and song writer, Debra Dudley was climbing the country music charts with a series of top 40s hits, dreaming about performing at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. During one of her performances, Reg Dudley, her late husband, was in the audience. Instantly smitten, he became her partner in life and ultimately in business. Together they invented a collection of disposable and porcelain coated steel grilling accessories manufactured in Bonnieville, Kentucky, called Oscarware grill toppers. As co-founder and president of Oscarware, Inc., Debra has now achieved stardom as an outdoor grilling guru.
Reg was a pioneer in the satellite dish industry until it imploded due to competition from cable. The first house they lived in did not have a kitchen stove. The outdoor gas grill was a great solution but made it difficult to grill certain foods so Reg placed a rectangle sheet of the expanded metal fashioned from the same material as their satellite dish on top of the grill grates. This made it possible to grill delicate fish, pizza, fresh vegetables. Little did they know this ingenious product would change outdoor grilling forever.
A close friend and member of the Grand Ole Opry, Oscar Sullivan, asked the couple to make these to sell at his Singing Hills campground located only two miles from Mammoth Cave National Park. The eponymous Oscarware grill toppers were born. Among the early enthusiasts were the famous backstage family Debra adopted at the Opry – singers Roy Acuff, Porter Wagoner and Jack Greene. Owing to their endorsement visibility exploded. Made in the USA Oscarware products are currently available across the US — at Walmart, Kroger, HEB, Wegmans, Publix and Albertsons – and 14 other countries thru ASDA and AAFES. The products are also available on Amazon.com, and www.oscarwareinc.com; global expansion is underway.
Debra has received national recognition from the U.S. Small Business Administration, was honored as Kentucky’s Small Businessperson of the Year, and received numerous tributes including the Kentucky SBDC Pacesetter Award. As a successful woman-owned business, she was recognized as the WBENC Southeast Woman Owned Business of the Year. See a full list of her awards here.
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The annual award honors a wegg stakeholder who has gone out of her way to connect, create, contribute, and collaborate with wegg, and forge alliances that have proven helpful. These are traits that define an exemplary global leader.
Successful entrepreneur Gail Adinamis was founder and CEO of GlobalCare Clinical Trials, LLC. Established in 2010, GlobalCare Clinical Trials brings Phase I-IV clinical trials to patients, instead of the other way around. Today, the company’s in-home and alternate-site nursing services can be found in more than 65 countries. The company was acquired by LabCorp in July, 2020, further expanding it’s decentralized clinical trials capabilities globally.
True global leaders like Gail Adinamis and many others who will follow in her footsteps are defined not only by their worldly knowledge and connections, nor by the global opportunities they seize, but by how they contribute to the improvement and growth of others.
