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Sloan Awards for 6
Workers
'I Found a Home' Ms. Gull has spent her entire career working for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, where she now oversees 1,300 Nurses as the Deputy Executive Director/Chief Nursing Officer at Elmhurst Hospital Center. "I found a wonderful place that became my home," she remarked. In 2005, the hospital received the coveted "Magnet" designation from the American Nurses' Association, a label known as the "gold standard of excellence." It was one of only three public hospitals in the nation to obtain that designation. "We want to excel," she remarked. "The hospital environment is such a wonderful place that our staff tends to stay a very long time." The list of winners who were chosen from more than 250,000 city employees also included a mental health official who has designed progressive counseling programs for city workers and an Ombudsman who has spent years helping youths at a detention center. The awards, which have been referred to as the Nobel Prizes of civil service, are given each spring by the Fund for the City of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to recognize extraordinary work by career civil servants. Each winner received a cash prize of $7,500. Mayor Bloomberg, who attended the award ceremony at Cooper Union, lauded the winners. "Your achievements are nothing short of remarkable," he told the awardees, who were cheered on by an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds of family members, friends, and colleagues. Kevin Bulger began working for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 1983. "I was unemployed and I was offered a job," he recalled. He helped create the HPD Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which offers counseling and other aid to workers in need. In 1993, he spearheaded the city's effort to consolidate most agency EAPs into one central service under the Office of Labor Relations.
Mr. Bulger said he assigned counselors, including an ex-bartender who was a Vietnam veteran, to speak with the workers at Ground Zero. "He was the perfect person to talk to," Mr. Bulger said. 'Just a Cog' Mr. Bulger himself drove around Ground Zero for months in a golf cart, personally providing help to rescue workers. Asked to describe that work, he spoke more generally, saying, "I could tell you hundreds of stories, but it's not us, it's the supervisors who refer them to us. I'm just a little cog in this whole system." Ralph Simmons started as a Juvenile Counselor for the Department of Juvenile Justice in 1988. "It was like a calling to me to work with kids," he recalled. "I got tired of corporate life." He has since been appointed Ombudsman for the Bridges Juvenile Center, where he helps troubled youths understand that they can turn things around. "The kids come to me with problems," he said before taking the stage at the ceremony. "A lot of the kids want to know when they are going home." After accepting his award, Mr. Simmons stressed that the children at the center "are very gifted and talented." He added, "They need help, they need guidance. I tell them they can do anything they want." He recalled walking with his wife on the street recently and bumping into one of those youths, whom he initially didn't recognize. The boy, who had grown up, told him that he was now working two jobs, and thanked him for his inspiring words while he was at the center. 'Made Her Smile' Franz Dextra and Leslie McKinnon, who work at the Human Resources Administration, were honored for their efforts assisting tenants about to be evicted, whose plights were often due to extenuating circumstances. "Our job is very serious," Mr. McKinnon told the cheering crowd after he received his award. "Preventing homelessness is one of the most important issues." Mr. Dextra, a court liaison, said that helping people sometimes involves giving them tough advice. He recalled how he once sternly told a woman who had lost her husband several years ago to return to work. The following day, he said, the woman's teenage daughter came to his office. "She told me that she had to see the man who made her mother smile," he remembered. "And she went back to work that Monday." Another honoree, Patricia Quigley, the fourth of nine children, said her career in education began when she was a child. "We weren't that rich, so we had to be innovative," she recalled. "We used to have swings in the closet and we found fun things to do with toilet paper." 'Demanding Perfectionist' "But that's not what made me want to be a Principal," she continued. "I was the oldest sister, so I really played school with my brothers and sisters. That's where I learned what to do; and they weren't good students. They wouldn't listen to me. So I said I have to get a job where someone is going to listen to me." She currently serves as the Principal of Children's Aide Society 61 in The Bronx, where student reading and math scores have continually risen. "She's a demanding perfectionist, but above all she loves the kids," said Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan, chair of the Sloan Public Service Selection Panel. Giving Kids More Ms. Quigley has never missed a day of work throughout her 25 year career in the Education Department. That dedication has trickled down to her staff members, who have a 95 percent attendance record, compared to the 80-percent citywide average. "I don't think we ever went away on a vacation," Ms. Quigley said, referring to her childhood. "Our vacations were in our backyard. So when I got to this position, I wanted kids to have the things that I didn't have."
She continued, "I wanted them to be happy all the time.
I wanted them not to be sad, because every time I see a child cry, I feel like
crying." | ||||||
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