find your sea story Archives - Mystic Seaport Museum

Mystic Seaport Museum Honored as Silver Stevie® Award Winner in 2025 American Business Awards®

Stevie winners will be celebrated during gala event on June 10 in New York

Mystic, Conn. (May 7, 2025) – Mystic Seaport Museum was named the winner of a Silver Stevie® Award in the Marketing Campaign of the Year Non-profit category in the 23rd Annual American Business Awards® today.

The American Business Awards are the U.S.A.’s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the United States. are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small. 

More than 3,600 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Startup of the Year, Executive of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Marketing Campaign of the Year, Thought Leader of the Year, and App of the Year, among others. Mystic Seaport Museum was nominated in the Marketing Campaign of the Year category for Non-Profit Organizations.

As the nation’s leading maritime museum, Mystic Seaport Museum believes the sea connects us all—through stories of immigration, family legacies, sailing, or transformative experiences on or near the water. In 2024, the Museum launched the Find Your Sea Story campaign to showcase the rich human experiences embedded within our collections, exhibitions, and vessels. Through storytelling, visitors go beyond simply viewing an “object” to understanding the broader narrative that the object or artifact represents. This campaign sparks curiosity, exploration, joy, and nostalgia—nurturing a sense of belonging and illustrating the profound ways the sea connects us all. Through this campaign, the Museum has reached new audiences and uncovered incredible stories.

More than 250 professionals worldwide participated in the judging process to select this year’s Stevie Award winners.

Judges’ comments included: “This campaign stands out for its strategic vision, creative execution, and measurable success in connecting diverse audiences to America’s maritime legacy,” and “The campaign demonstrates exceptional strategic planning, execution, and results in connecting audiences with maritime history through storytelling. . . . Its comprehensive multimedia strategy effectively integrates emotional storytelling with innovative outreach efforts.”

“Organizations across the United States continue to demonstrate resilience and innovation,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Miller. “The 2025 Stevie winners have helped drive that success through their innovation, persistence, and hard work. We congratulate all of the winners in the 2025 ABAs and look forward to celebrating their achievements during our June 10 gala event in New York.”

Sophia Matsas, Vice President of Marketing and Communications, stated, “This wasn’t just a campaign—it was a living, breathing expression of our mission. Find Your Sea Story was a true omnichannel initiative, driven by storytelling, strategy, creativity, and collaboration. It invited audiences to forge a personal connection with the sea through our world-class exhibitions, historic vessels, family activities, seaport village, shipyard projects, and immersive on-the-water experiences.”

Visit findyourseastory.com to learn more about the campaign and watch the mini-documentary series that takes viewers on a voyage, revealing the profound and enduring connections between individuals and the sea—and visit the Museum to find your sea story.

Details about The American Business Awards and the list of 2025 Stevie winners are available at www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

About Mystic Seaport Museum

Mystic Seaport Museum is the nation’s leading maritime Museum. Founded in 1929 to gather and preserve the rapidly disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past, the Museum has grown to become a national center for research and education with the mission to “inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience.” The Museum’s grounds cover 19 acres on the Mystic River in Mystic, Connecticut, and include a recreated New England coastal village, a working shipyard, formal exhibit halls, and state-of-the-art artifact storage facilities. The Museum is home to more than 500 historic watercraft, including four National Historic Landmark vessels, most notably the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan. For more information, please visit mysticseaport.org and follow the Museum on Facebook, X, YouTube, and Instagram.

About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in nine programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com. Sponsors of The 2025 American Business Awards include HCLTech, Melissa Sones Consulting, and SoftPro.

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Mystic Seaport Museum is pleased to announce the launch of its Writer-in-Residence program. The annual, invitational residency correlates with the Museum’s “Find Your Sea Story” campaign, developed to encourage its audiences to reflect upon their own heritage and histories in connection to the ocean and its culture. Osman Can Yerebakan (who has been published in The New York Times, BOMB Magazine, The Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, among other cultural outlets) will be the inaugural writer in residence. During the week-long residency in April 2024, in addition to connecting with the Museum staff and communities they serve, Yerebakan will have the opportunity to explore the Museum’s permanent installations, including the working shipyard, historic village, floating vessel exhibits, and the indoor rotating exhibition galleries.

“Our mission is to inspire an enduring connection to the American maritime experience. Through this residency, we hope that Osman and future writers in residence will discover their sea story by connecting more deeply with the Museum. We believe that this path of self-discovery will help to unveil a greater purpose and reveal that the sea connects us all,” says Sophia Matsas, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Museum.

The Writer-in-Residence program includes domestic transport, accommodation, and a food stipend. Yerebakan will receive access to the Museum’s impressive collection of over 500 historic vessels in the Henry B. du Pont Preservation Shipyard and Wells Boat Hall, the Museum’s Collections Research Center (CRC), the G. W. Blunt White Library, and the recreated seaport village. He will also have access to the exhibitions on view: Alexis Rockman: Oceanus, an exhibition of newly-commissioned paintings addressing climate change and extinction; Spineless: A Glass Menagerie of Blaschka Marine Invertebrates, a collection of glass models, specimens, and archival materials following the intriguing story of father and son glassmakers Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka; and Entwined: Freedom, Sovereignty, and the Sea, a forthcoming major Spring exhibition centering maritime histories in Indigenous, African, and African American worldviews and experiences. While in Mystic, Yerebakan will write a feature article drawn from his experiences to be published in the Museum’s Spring 2024 magazine and will also be at liberty to publish work in other media outlets.

“As a Mediterranean living in New York, I am thrilled for the opportunity to imagine my own route over thousands of aquatic miles, through the power of words,” shared Yerebakan. “The collection of Mystic Seaport Museum which is one of its kind in the US promises unparalleled connections to outline between human perseverance and curiosity. I am excited to explore many narratives innate to drift which has been a major force for civilizations for transformative or dismal reasons. Seeing the Museum’s archives and exhibitions through my own journey will be an experience to always remember.”

Yerebakan is a New York-based art writer and curator. His writing has appeared in Financial Times, GQ, Artforum, The New York Times: T: The New York Times Style Magazine, New York magazine, The Guardian, BOMB, The Art Newspaper, Artsy, Artnet, ARTnews, Airmail, and Architectural Digest. He has written for several artist catalogs and is on the curatorial committee for the upcoming edition of Future Fair. He co-edited the Art & Style list of Forbes 30 Under 30, 2024. He will organize a group exhibition on masculinity for MoCA Westport in Connecticut later this year.

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