Recipients
30th Awards2025
Arts
Jennifer Packer
Jennifer Packer is a figurative artist whose expressive paintings and drawings incorporate gestural yet precise brushwork to offer a powerful reimagining of American representation. Her intimate portraits, marked by tenderness and depth, allow her subjects to either emerge from or dissolve into the canvas — providing privacy and autonomy while reflecting on the social realities that inform their lives.
Learn More“Storytelling is at the center of how we understand ourselves and everything else.”
Marie Watt
Marie Watt is an interdisciplinary artist whose work weaves together printmaking, textiles, sculpture and community collaboration to explore cultural intersections and the rich tapestry of shared human stories. A member of the Seneca Nation (part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy), she draws upon Haudenosaunee feminist teachings and Indigenous knowledge to address themes relevant to contemporary life.
Learn More“I see blankets as living, storied objects. We are received into this world in blankets, and in many ways depart in a blanket … worn areas, stained bits, and mended parts ... are part of the object’s history.”
Economy
Byron Auguste
Byron Auguste, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Opportunity@Work, is leading a national movement to rewire the U.S. labor market to recognize and benefit from the skills, value and potential of STARs — workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes rather than a bachelor’s degree — and to remove the barriers blocking 50% of U.S. workers from accessing opportunities for upward career mobility.
Learn More“If we truly want a merit-based economy, the starting point is to value all skills.”
Sara Bronin
Sara Bronin, J.D., is a Mexican American architect, attorney, professor and policymaker whose work reveals the impacts of land use laws on communities, housing affordability, access to education, economic development, job growth and transportation. The author of “Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World,” she founded the “National Zoning Atlas” to digitize, demystify and democratize zoning information.
Learn More“The seemingly mundane rules governing our built environment powerfully influence our health, wealth, happiness and long-term survival.”
Environment
Dana Gunders
Dana Gunders is a national leader in the movement to reduce food waste. Her work has catalyzed public awareness, changed industry practices, shifted consumer behavior and influenced policy to reduce the 73.9 million tons of food wasted annually in the U.S., mitigating climate impacts and promoting sustainable food systems.
Learn More“About one-third of food in the U.S. goes uneaten. That’s like leaving a grocery store with three bags, dropping one in the parking lot and never bothering to pick it up.”
Sacoby Wilson
Sacoby Wilson, Ph.D., is a renowned thought leader and scientist in the areas of exposure science, environmental health disparities and community-engaged research. With a commitment to science that serves, he addresses how pollution and climate change disproportionately affect people of color and those living in low-income areas and works to INpower communities to achieve justice.
Learn More“My work deploys science of the people, for the people and by the people.”