Meet the 2011 Rising Star award winners

The votes are in and 25 individuals are being recognized in this year’s Rising Star awards program, cosponsored by Federal Computer Week (FCW) and its affiliate publications, Government Computer News (GCN) and Washington Technology.

The Rising Star awards program honors up-and-coming employees in the public and private sectors who have made an early — and substantive — mark in the government IT community. The program is an opportunity for agencies and contractors to spotlight some extraordinary achievements, both as a reward to the people and as an example to others.

This year’s winners from government and industry were selected from more than 125 nominations submitted by their supervisors and coworkers. An independent panel of judges from the government IT community selected the 25 finalists, including 18 people from government, six from industry and one from academia.

As always, we offer our thanks to Phil Kiviat and the Young AFCEANs, from the Bethesda, Md., chapter of AFCEA International, who first suggested this program and continue to support it.

This year’s winners and the judges will be featured in print and online editions of FCW in October. The winners also will be recognized at the GCN Awards Gala on Oct. 19.

Here are the 2011 Rising Stars:

Zachary Baldwin
General Services Administration

Cate Berard
Environmental Protection Agency

Leonard D'Avolio
Department of Veterans Affairs

Jamie Findlater
Department of State

John Mark Hall
Department of Navy

Zacharie T. Hall
Department of Army

Jessica Hernandez
Food and Drug Administration

William Jay Huie
eGlobalTech

Brian Ibbison
TCG

Jim Lanoue
Department of Homeland Security

Zachary Lindsay
Department of Army

Gaurav Mathur
Creative Computing Solutions Inc.

Jessica Milcetich
General Services Administration

Maj. Nicholas R. Miller
U.S. Army

Robert S. Niewood
General Services Administration

Mari Oh
Blackstone Technology Group

Gaurav “GP” Pal
Smartronix

Matt Reiss
Department of Agriculture

Bridget Roddy
Department of State

Junaid Shah
General Services Administration

Veda Sims
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board

Tom Suder
University of Central Florida

Paul Swider
Department of State

Jeremy Thomas
Idaho National Laboratory
Department of Energy

Nicole Willis
Department of Homeland Security