Congratulations to the 2026 Humor Awards Finalists!!! These nominees go the extra mile to bring humor into the workplace, and very deserving of the Humor That Works award!
Be sure to check out the full nominations in the 2026 Humor Awards Finalists pdf to learn why each person was nominated. Tune in to the Awards Show on April 29th to see the final winners!
Humor Appreciation Award
Recognizing and enjoying humor in everyday life, and celebrating it in others.
- Heidi Hanna. For turning a personal appreciation of humor (first at an AATH Conference during a dark depression) into a career of sharing its benefits with corporate leaders, professional athletes, and over 2 million LinkedIn learners.
- Tyler Horvath. For a comedic case that gratitude practices actually work, delivered by someone who would rather not admit it.
- Nancy Sue Pitt. For rediscovering her sense of humor after six years of grief, and writing in to share the exact moment she realized the laughter was coming back.
Humor Consideration Award
Knowing when humor is (and isn’t) appropriate, and making the careful call.
- Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. For research-backed reframing of dark humor, not as a defense mechanism but as a physiological tool that creates the pause between reacting and responding.
- Allen Klein. For nearly four decades of bringing humor into hospice care, death and dying, and therapeutic loss work, including presentations at more than 100 hospices.
- Melissa Mork. For weaving humor into stories of grief and adversity in a way that lets audiences laugh without losing the weight of the moment.
Humor Curation Award
Finding and sharing the perfect meme, video, or reference at exactly the right moment.
- Rachel McCoy. For defusing an awkward Teams chat with an Adele “Hello, it’s me” GIF, and rescuing a derailing meeting with a well-timed “sooooo, would you like to hear about X? It’s a GREAT story.”
- Taylor Santore. For sending the right meme at the right moment on a small startup team, including during internal meetings, just to see if you crack.
- Lisa Yeager. For a Bill Murray (in Stripes) GIF that perfectly matched a Slack post of a cat and dog wrestling, and for the habit of reliably doing that.
Humor Creation Award
Writing or producing original funny content that sticks with you.
- Nikki Goldman. For her memoir, Lunacy is in my Family’s DNA, which turns growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia, depression, and anxiety into a story readers actually want to spend time with.
- Kelly Maddox. For a test survey response (“My work life is a dream.”) that turned test data, possibly the least funny genre of writing on earth, into a small gift for her team.
- Patrick Vennebush. For a series of math-joke Zoom backgrounds (including a wrapped stick of butter that will never fit in its dish) that consistently break the ice in virtual meetings.
Humor Performance Award
Delivering humor with great timing, commitment, and energy.
- Loralee Erickson. For dropping her prepared opening to improvise a transition off the emcee, landing the laugh, and warming up a room that was about to hear a serious case for volunteering.
- Kevin Peterson. For paying for a stand-up class, actually attending it, and performing since at Madison Comedy Club, bars, a corporate gig in Dallas, and in front of a deeply unimpressed cat.
- Ed Reggi. For leaning with humor first in every interaction, whether through jokes, voices, funny faces, or the improviser’s instinct to “Yes, and” whatever shows up.
Humor Facilitation Award
Leading activities and exercises that get the room laughing together.
- Jessica Bensch. For a lifeboat icebreaker (Barbie, The Rock, Homer Simpson, and Kermit walk into a boat) that turned a 30-person group decision exercise into a memorable one.
- J. Cornelius George. For daily classroom humor that students call out by name, and the Laugh More Challenge that invites teachers and students everywhere to try it for themselves.
- Soyeong Han. For structuring humor as a clinical and community tool that helps South Korean children with pragmatic language difficulties find their own voices.
Humor Application Award
Using humor to solve a real problem or achieve a goal.
- Sabrina Juran. For making heavy topics like disaster risk and demographic change land with audiences, including a UN side-event presentation that interviewed an AI on stage and a six-panel LinkedIn cartoon where a child asks if big policy ideas fit in a suitcase.
- Tim Murphy. For opening networking introductions with a well-timed joke that resets the energy of a stiff room, and gives everyone else permission to follow.
- Ian Schmidt. For an ADKAR change-management AI training agent whose feedback on strong plans includes “That plan is a quarter pounder with cheese, a medium fry, and a Diet Coke, because I’m lovin’ it!”
Humor Empowerment Award
Using humor to lift others up and help them shine.
- Janice Bannister. For 20+ years of teaching stand-up classes to students aged 8 to 92, including a few who went on to tour comedy clubs, release Amazon specials, or marry a classmate.
- Chip Lutz. For 40 Lenten days (and then some) of daily Instagram videos bringing 60 seconds of humility, humor, and hope to audiences of every faith.
- Sarah Routman. For nearly two decades of Laughter Yoga work, a free weekly Monday laughter call (running for 12 years), and training 50+ Laughter Yoga Leaders across the US and Canada.
Congrats again to the 2026 Humor Award Finalists and thank you to everyone who submitted nominations! Very well deserved! And tune in to the Awards Show on April 29th to see the final winners!
