Feds honored for service at black-tie gala

Government officials will recognize federal employees whose service has helped make the world safer, healthier and greener during a black-tie dinner in Washington on Wednesday.

The winners of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service's ninth annual Service to America medals come from eight agencies, and will be honored for their achievements in renewable energy, patient care, foreign affairs, law enforcement, homeland security and combating climate change.

"It's hard to ignore the fact that there's a lot of public discourse about getting to smaller government, whether employees are earning too much money -- there's also conversation about government failings," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership. "You don't see the complete story, which can only be told if you look at people like this who are doing extraordinary things for the American public."

Pius Bannis, a field office director at the Homeland Security Department's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services bureau, will be named Federal Employee of the Year for his work with Haitian orphans following the earthquake that hit the country in January. Bannis helped hundreds of children through the adoption process to find new homes in the United States.

"It was a human reaction to a human tragedy," he said. "So many children were dead or dying, and so many were in the process of being adopted. We were all so concerned. My automatic reaction was to take care of them."

Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, won the Career Achievement Medal for her participation in global warming and climate change research. Solomon's work served as the basis for the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 treaty designed to help restore the ozone layer by phasing out 95 percent of the world's ozone-depleting substances, and she helped write the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's comprehensive report on climate change science.

Two other awards highlight the work of federal employees on environmental issues. The Call to Service Medal for young employees will go to 29-year-old Saskia van Gendt, a scientist at the Environmental Protection Agency, for her work in promoting green building construction and the use of reusable packaging materials to reduce waste. Van Gendt founded the Lifecycle Building Challenge, which encourages students, architects and builders to use environmentally friendly building design. Jeffrey Baker, director of laboratory management for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the Energy Department, will receive the Science and Environment Medal for his work on the world's largest net-zero office building, a 220,000 square-foot structure designed to create in-house more energy than it uses.

Shane Kelley and Eva Ristow of the Social Security Administration will receive the Citizen Services Medal for developing a two-way videoconferencing system that provides services to remote and impoverished communities. Teri Glass and the Army Medical Support Systems team will be awarded the National Security and International Affairs Medal for developing medical evacuation equipment that transports soldiers from the battlefield to hospitals. The equipment has increased the survival rate of personnel wounded in combat.

"We had to reassess how to best keep our soldiers safe, which is the No.1 priority," Glass said. "We needed to figure out how we could both provide them with immediate treatment at the point of injury and also be able to get them back to the care they urgently needed within the critical first hour."

Sandra Brooks, a Navy employee and deputy director of intelligence and security for the Joint Interagency Task Force South, will receive the Homeland Security Medal for her work using technology to help military and law enforcement agencies combat maritime drug trafficking. The Justice and Law Enforcement Medal will go to Jamie Konstas, an FBI intelligence analyst who developed an online database that provides information about sexual predators and child victims.

"These are incredible public servants who are unsung heroes, and their story needs to be told to incentivize the kind of achievement we want from our government," Stier said. "What sets them apart is that they have really achieved something of real consequence with real impact."

The medals are accompanied by monetary awards ranging from $3,000 to $10,000. For complete biographies of the winners, click here.