Employee Spotlight: Meet the Winners of Our Annual ODIE Awards
We gave out the first ODIE Award at our annual team gathering in North Carolina in 2025. ODIE stands for the Optimal Dynamics Innovation and Excellence, and the idea behind it was simple: Nominate the person who sets the standard, and recognize them in front of the entire company.
This year, the Optimal Dynamics All Together moved to Montana — and we gave out three ODIE Awards to worthy recipients.
The winners, chosen through nominations from the leadership team, were Ben Marks (recently promoted to Vice President, Sales Engineering & Customer Success), Amrith Arunachalam (Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning), and Lora Chen (Tech Lead, Software Engineer).
At the end of our Monday session, each winner’s manager took a moment to share a little about them and what they accomplished over the past year. Here’s more on the meaning behind the ODIE Award, plus a look at each winner and why they earned this recognition.
What the ODIE Award Measures
The ODIE Award goes to the people who set the standard for how we work. Because it’s driven by leadership nominations, the Award carries real weight.
All three winners this year received multiple nominations. Those nominations describe three completely different jobs but a shared instinct for taking responsibility and working hard to see projects through to completion. Here’s a closer look at each of the three 2026 winners:
Ben Marks: Experience-Based Guidance for Customers
Ben was recently promoted to Vice President, Sales Engineering & Customer Success. Before he joined Optimal Dynamics, he was an operator who ran freight and knew exactly what a Monday morning looked like when plans fell apart. That experience means that he understands how much a dispatcher must unlearn to trust a machine’s recommendation over instinct.
That background is the reason customers feel comfortable opening up to Ben. Change management is incredibly difficult in the trucking industry. Ben can walk alongside our customers through the change management process because he’s lived it from their side of the table.
Nearly 5 years ago, Ben started on the Optimal Dynamics Customer Success team, moved to leading Solution Sales Engineering, and today leads both. He gives demos, closes deals, works tradeshow floors, and strikes up a conversation with anyone who makes eye contact with him — always with real enthusiasm behind it.
None of it is performative, which is a common theme from his nominations. He genuinely cares about this company, its customers, and the people he works with. One nomination summed it up this way: “He’s the kind of teammate who makes everyone around him better, and the kind of person a company is lucky to have in its corner.”
Amrith Arunachalam: Taking on Problems Nobody Knows How to Solve
Amrith has been a constant innovator during his 4+ years at Optimal Dynamics. One of his nominations went straight to the point by sharing this:
“If you have an impactful idea or key project with no clue how to actually build the thing, give it to Amrith, and he will figure it out and find a way to deliver.”
Plenty of people can execute when handed specifications and a plan. It takes a different kind of engineer to execute when there’s no obvious path forward and no guarantee that the objective is even possible.
Real innovation requires someone willing to sit with ambiguity long enough to find the path forward. Amrith does that repeatedly, which is why he earned this recognition.
Lora Chen: Holding Things Together Behind the Scenes
Mapping only gets attention when something breaks. Lora keeps the mapping from breaking at Optimal Dynamics.
She holds the mapping layer together by going further than the job description, digging into problems to find creative solutions, and doing whatever it takes to make the business side of Optimal Dynamics successful.
She also works across teams, which gives her a unique position to see things that others miss. When two groups need to coordinate to get something out the door, she’s often the liaison. As one nomination put it, she provides “a critical connection for success.”
What All of the 2026 Winners Have in Common
Ben spends his days in front of customers, Amrith spends his time building things that don’t exist yet, and Lora spends hers making sure everything remains steady behind the scenes.
While their work is different, they’re connected by a sense of personal responsibility and a commitment to finding solutions for the toughest problems our teams and customers face.
That’s the culture we’re trying to build at Optimal Dynamics — and it’s the reason why the ODIE Awards exist. Congratulations to Ben, Amrith and Lora. And many thanks to everyone who submitted a nomination this year. You made the decision impossible in the best possible way.
