ACT-IAC honors Reed, Turco, O'Neill, others for leadership

ACT-IAC presented its individual awards at a Nov. 28 General Membership meeting. The 2012 Janice K. Mendenhall Spirit of Leadership Award -- ACT-IAC's highest honor -- went to Anne Reed, a former CIO of the Department of Agriculture and a champion in industry of acquisition reform. For many years, Reed led ASI Government, a firm that provided staff and expertise on acquisition to government. She now heads her own consulting firm.

The ACT President Award was presented to Kathleen Turco, associate administrator of the General Services Administration's Office of Governmentwide Policy, for her work with IAC in building an acquisition excellence conference. The IAC Chair award went to Molly O'Neill of CGI Federal for her work in helping build content throughout IAC programs.

ACT-IAC Executive Director Kenneth Allen praised the winners for their volunteer efforts: "These are the voices of collaboration and action that make the ACT-IAC community successful in helping to improve government."

Marietta Allen, director of information technology policy management in the Office of the Chief Information Officer at the Department of Interior and Leslie Barry, vice president of government affairs and business development at GTSI, were honored with special awards for their work in leading the ACT-IAC Volunteer Corps.

Other awards announced at the meeting included:

• Rookie of the Year: Rabiah Sutton, founder of FWD Think, for her work on ACT-IAC programs and shared interest groups.
• Government Contributor of the Year: Rory Schultz, Agriculture Department chief technology officer, for his leadership in the area of professional development
• Industry Contributor of the Year: Tom Suder, president of MobileGov, for his efforts to foster government-industry collaboration on digital strategy implementation.

ACT-IAC is a nonprofit educational organization devoted to public-private partnership in the federal IT community. The group's annual awards ordinarily are given at the Executive Leadership Conference in Williamsburg, Va. The 2012 ELC, however, was cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy.