[caption id="attachment_39639" align="alignleft" width="1080"] Left to right: Ben du Pont, Carol A. Ammon, Thère du Pont[/caption]

By Ken Mammarella
Special to Delaware Business Times

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Carol A. Ammon last night took home the annual Pete du Pont Freedom Award.

A program of the Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation, this year's award reflects the charitable organization's growing focus on entrepreneurship and job creation.

Ammon's career features 23 years with the DuPont and DuPont Merck pharmaceutical units and 10 years as founder of Endo Pharmaceuticals. Her resume also includes service on the boards of the Christiana Care Health System, Hagley Museum and the University of Delaware.

Last year, she earned her bachelor's in nursing (atop a bachelor's in biology and a master's in business administration) so that she could help individual patients, she said.

Ammon didn't become an entrepreneur until she was in her mid-40s, but she later discussed her work as a teenage Avon lady and her early realization that business was more fun than science.

"Don't get so focused on the destination," she said about her career path. "It's the journey and what you learn along the way" that matter.

The ceremony also celebrated the work of Logan Herring, leader of Wilmington's Warehouse Project, a co-working facility that unites teen services; and Jason Aviles, director of Wilmington Green Box, which provides at-risk teens with jobs and urban communities with healthy food.

Both are 2018 DBT40 Awards winners - which honor Delaware's top business leaders under 40 - and entrepreneurs nurtured by the Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation's Reinventing Delaware program, which solicits the public for innovative ideas to create jobs in the state.

Submissions for the next cycle of Reinventing Delaware are due by Oct. 23 at https://www.petedupontfreedomfoundation.org/reinventingdelaware.

"We should take risks "¦ and be encouraged and supported to do so," said Thère du Pont, a member of the foundation's board and one of Pete's sons.