Consensus Point is in the Nashville Post’s Tech 25 (”Middle Tennessee’s Brightest IT Ventures”) for 2011! We are so proud to be included among such premier and outstanding Nashville technology companies as Edo Interactive, Capital Confirmation, Emma, HCA IT&S, and HealthStream.

We applaud Nashville Post for recognizing the importance of the growth of technology ventures as Nashville builds its reputation as one of the nation’s top cities for tech entrepreneurs. Because of this growing emphasis on technology entrepreneurs, the inclusion of Consensus Point in this elite group is especially rewarding and exciting for our team!

As always, Nashville Post said it best when they summed up our offering, “The simple goal of Consensus Point is to reduce the risk of uncertainty—a much needed service in today’s world of ever—present market flux.”

You have to be a subscriber to read the whole thing, but here’s the rest of our excerpt:

Since CEO Linda Rebrovick took over the leadership of Nashville-based Consensus Point in 2009, big-name clients like General Electric, Best Buy and others have signed on for the company’s enterprise prediction markets products.

The idea behind the Consensus Point brand is to help companies reduce the risk of uncertainty and improve revenue by more accurately forecasting projects, products and services. Prediction markets provide insight to a company’s management by synthesizing the previously untapped knowledge derived from employees, customers and business partners—knowledge then used to aid the prediction analysis.

Consensus Point is excited to announce Linda Rebrovick, our CEO and Chair, HealthStream Board Governance Committee, visited the NYSE as a guest on Corporate Board Member’s “This Week in the Boardroom“. TK Kerstetter, President, Corporate Board Member (CBM), a NYSE Euronext company, interviewed Linda on her perspectives of successful Board Governance. Other impressive and notable industry leaders who have also been guests on this premiere show with TK include Denise Morrison, President & CEO, Campbell Soup Co., Philip Lochner, Former SEC Commissioner & Current Director, and Duncan Niederauer, CEO, NYSE Euronext, among others.

Linda’s experience serving as a Director on several public boards, including HealthStream and Pinnacle Financial Partners, KPMG LLP, uniquely qualifies her to speak on this important topic. In the interview, Linda speaks briefly but passionately about her work at Consensus Point (which we love!) and discusses valuable ideas to identify qualified board candidates with diversity of thought and experience.

The diversity of board members is important—not just diversity of background and expertise—but also diversity of thought and experience that come from having a board that brings diversity of gender and race. There are many qualified candidates so the nominating committee must find and recommend the outstanding directors who meet the skills needs, bring diversity of thought, and fit within the board and company culture. For example, Linda specifically recommends the following organizations to provide qualified women candidates: Inter Organization Network (ION), Womens Busines Leaders in US Healthcare (WBL), and Women’s Corporate Directors (WCD).

At Consensus Point, we are very proud of Linda’s recent honors recognizing her efforts in our business, community and boards. Linda has been named to the Academy for Women of Achievement, YWCA; Most Powerful Women, the Nashville Post; and Power Leaders in Technology, Nashville Business Journal. And that’s just in 2011! Her track record of leadership, sound management, and good governance have doubtless added value to every board on which she’s served. We are fortunate to work with her every day to spread the word about prediction markets and are proud that her talents can now be shared with a larger audience.

Click here to watch Linda on “This Week in the Boardroom.”

Nashville Post, a prominent local business journal, and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce have partnered to create an inaugural event called “Most Powerful Women.” Our very own Linda Rebrovick was honored as one of the inaugural Top 5 most powerful women at a sold-out luncheon and panel discussion that focused on the challenges that women have overcome as they have taken their places as leaders in corporate America.

This event provides further recognition within the business community of our talented leaders at Consensus Point, as the company continues to thrive in an increasingly competitive market. Our success is based upon our comprehensive solution’s ability to provide timely and predictive information to our customer base of international firms and Fortune 500 companies.

Our powerful platform has been proven effective at accelerating forecast accuracy and mitigating risk for our clients. Contact us to add the Consensus Point prediction market to your business intelligence suite.

Consensus Point is proud to serve some of the world’s leading companies from our Nashville headquarters. Last week, we announced our partnership with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center to create Startup Exchange. Now, we’re pleased and proud to have been named to Nashville Post’s Fast 50.

From the envelope:

This email is to notify you that your company will appear on Nashville Post magazine’s first ever list of the 50 fast growing, emerging companies to watch in Middle Tennessee.

Selection was based on numerous factors, ranging from revenue and employee growth to growth over a period of years, growth as compared to industry average, projected growth and projected pitfalls, among other criteria. But selection of the list also involved editorial judgment. Many of the companies selected applied to be considered for the list, but many were also chosen by the editorial staff at Nashville Post based on awareness of a company’s success or references from knowledgeable sources about area companies performing well. A handful are even selected for their promise of near-term growth, which, combined with their stories, snugly fit the list’s mission to identify “hot” companies.

And this is how Nashville Post describes the group:

Nashville Post’s Fast 50 is our annual look at Middle Tennessee companies on a roll. Fast-growing, emerging or, in some cases, simply brimming with promise, they represent some of the best the Nashville area has to offer in terms of entrepreneurial vision and growth.

From startups gaining their financial legs to more established companies whose mature growth is remarkable, this array of companies — big and small, highly profitable and increasingly profitable, full of dreams or realizing their dreams — is perhaps best described as a list of ‘companies to watch.’

It is our goal, every day, to be a company to watch.

A few months ago, we posted on our Facebook page about our CEO Linda Rebrovick being honored by being named to CABLE’s 2010 Board Walk of Fame. We were pleasantly surprised to see Linda featured in comprehensive coverage [PDF] of the issue of women on corporate board’s in the July/August edition of Nashville Post.

Earlier this year, Nashville-based health care learning and research company HealthStream announced that Jim Daniell, one of its board members and one of the company’s earliest clients, would not stand for re-election to the board. At press time, HealthStream’s search to replace him was ongoing.

HealthStream has a female board director in Linda Rebrovick, a longtime IBM executive, KPMG partner and currently CEO of Consensus Point, an innovator in enterprise prediction market software serving the red-hot forecasting sector. Rebrovick’s connection to CABLE and other organizations positioned her well to help HealthStream’s board identify qualified female candidates—and she was only too happy to do so. With the new SEC regulations in place requiring that boards disclose efforts to nominate a diverse pool for open board seats, it was no doubt welcome information to the otherwise all male HealthStream board.

HealthStream CEO Bobby Frist expresses a strong desire to increase diversity on his board, in part by citing statistics that show a high correlation between board diversity and the performance of a company.

“We subscribe to that notion as a full board and as individual board members,” Frist says. “The candidate pool we’ve recently created exhibits a diversity of experience and background and thought.”

Frist says there have been “huge advances” in recent times in bringing qualified diverse candidates to the light, in no small part because of organizations like CABLE, ION and others that have ramped up efforts to organize resources in such a way that board searches can achieve greater diversity.

In part due to HealthStream’s success in its current search, Frist scoffs at the notion that there are not enough qualified diverse candidates to sit on boards.

“For me, that perspective also has a lot to do with what companies mean by being quali- fied, because you can be a student of business in many ways. You don’t have to have been involved in a big company. That, to me, doesn’t make you the best-qualified candidate. So there may be some problem in the way people are defining their qualifications that would open up the definition to more candidates if they thought of it slightly differently.”

While Frist agrees that the gears have moved “very slowly” in regard to corporate board diversification, he believes the overlay of increased SEC disclosure requirements, greater awareness and more education will result in a more rapid pace of change in the next three to five years than in the last few.

“With any major push like this, education comes first,” Frist says. “Change will follow.” That’s no guarantee that HealthStream will choose a diverse candidate in its current search. Nor should there be. “The key is to have a good and diverse candidate pool, and I’m confident we have achieved that,” Frist says. “But the number one priority is selecting the most qualified candidate from the broadest qualified pool. Think of it in those two ways, and I’m confident we’ll get the right person.”

There’s also a brief interview with Linda:

What can women do to improve the situation?

Women can make it known that they are interested. Much of it is just putting yourself in the candidate pool. Second, be sure that you have a development plan. Sit on a nonprofit board. A private company board. Work your way up. Attend a corporate board member event. Get a mentor, someone on a corporate board, to guide you through the type of development you need to become more prepared. Try to get in a position in your company where you are managing a P&L, because financial expertise is really important.

What can companies do?

Companies need to decide that diversity is a qualification that is a priority in their searches and then they need to tap into CABLE or ION [or other outlets] and identify candidates. Clearly, they’ll be very impressed if they take the initiative, make it a commitment and go find these resources.

Thanks to Nashville Post for covering this issue, and thanks to Linda for being a great leader!