2024 Governor's Ambassador Award Winners
Community Service and Volunteerism Award
Amy Carder, Cabinet for Health and Family Services
Amy Carder has spent many years volunteering her time to help foster children and their families. She cofounded Foster Adoptive Parent Association (FAPA) of Northern KY. The organization provides training, support, outreach and activities for foster children and their families to engage in. Amy has a special place in her heart for foster care and adoption after navigating through these herself along with her husband, Shiloh. Together, they have 6 children, 5 of whom were adopted through foster care in KY.
She puts her all into every single project she takes on, many times having to be very creative with ideas on how to raise money for events and to find enough volunteers to help pull the events off. She never gives up and makes sure that every event or training that she is a part of holding is the best that it can possibly be and that each and every child or parent get the most out of it. She absolutely wants to make foster care and adoption the best experience it can be for every single family.
Courage Award
Jason Keaton, Energy and Environment Cabinet
During most days within the Energy & Environment Cabinet, we serve the Commonwealth by enforcing laws relating to natural resources and the environment. It keeps citizens safe and healthy, while supporting a positive business climate. But on February 12, 2023, Mr. Keaton went above and beyond his normal mine inspection duties to provide emergency assistance and comfort to an elderly gentleman in distress.
Mr. Keaton was inspecting a mining site in Bell County. To get a better vantage point, he went down a dead-end road and was surprised to see a new-model pickup truck stopped down the hill just within a couple hundred feet from the site's high wall – a sheer, vertical cliff. Mr. Keaton found it concerning that not only was it stuck in the mud, but it appeared to have been there since the night before. Mr. Keaton walked down to the truck, and to his surprise, an elderly man opened the door. Mr. Keaton gave the man water and asked if he had a family, who he was then able to contact through Facebook. When his family called Mr. Keaton, they made him aware that the man he had found had been missing for two days. When he recounted the incident, Mr. Keaton was quoted saying, “No matter whether I was wearing a state (employee) shirt or in a state vehicle, I would've done the same thing."
Customer Service Award
Heather Campbell and Meagan Dunn, Department for Juvenile Justice
Heather Campbell and Meagan Dunn created the Christian County Community Connections Program and had their first event in March 2022. Since that time, 60 youth have participated in the program. This program hosts an event every month for at-risk youth who are either probated or committed to the Department of Juvenile Justice, placed at Hopkinsville Group Home, or enrolled at Christian County Day Treatment Center. These events allow the youth to make connections with positive individuals, agencies, and programs in the community to deter them from entering the legal system or reoffending. For youth who have participated in this program, recidivism rates have decreased by 29% for public offenses and 8.03% for status offenses.
Heather and Meagan have taken an extra step to initiate a prevention program to keep youth out of the juvenile justice system. This program helps to break generational cycles of juvenile delinquency.
Leadership Award
Andrea Queen, Cabinet for Health and Family Services
Andrea helps her team find meaning and value in their work even on the toughest of days. She leads by example and sets the bar in everything she does. There is nothing she would ask her team to do, that she would not do herself. Andrea is also one of the founding members of the Employee Retention Committee team in Fayette and actively participates in retention efforts to help ensure all staff are happy at work, appreciated, and recognized for all their hard work.
Andrea leads her teams to victory by achieving and surpassing goals set daily to care for clients. She has uplifted the lives of so many that have crossed her path over the years working in Family Support in some capacity or another. From helping a homeless veteran with cancer find housing, throwing a birthday party for those who have never experienced one, to providing home-cooked meals to those in need, she isn't looking at these individuals as just another number in a long line of many. Her care and compassion, as well as love of community sets her apart from so many others.
Professional Achievement Award
Wesley Turner, Energy and Environment Cabinet
Wes Turner has led his team into the next era of geoprocessing using new technology through the use of high-tech drones for use within the Division of Water. These drones are making a huge difference for research and safety of employees. These drones are now used to inspect dams up close, so that workers do not have to repel down the sides and risk falling. Mr. Turner also uses drones to investigate erosion problems in various creeks and to scout out areas with forgotten wells, decreasing the likelihood of an employee stepping in one and hurting themselves. Overall, what he's been doing helps keep others safe and serve the community. He has led his team to use drones to increase the amount of work done more efficiently and safely.
Teamwork Award
Kentucky State Police - Post 13, Hazard, KY
On Wednesday, July 27, 2022, Post 13, in Hazard, started receiving calls in reference to rapidly rising flood waters across multiple counties. The Hazard Post district would experience the most devastating flood in the area's history, with water cresting at forty-three feet on the North Fork of the Kentucky River. During the first 48 hours of the flood, post dispatchers received nearly twenty-five thousand calls for assistance. Several of the calls the dispatchers took during that time described water levels and damage in the community in which they lived. Hundreds of people were calling from their attics and rooftops, begging anyone to help them. During the flooding event, KSP Post 13 was also the point of contact for reporting missing persons, where they had 98 people reported missing. This nomination highlighted the tremendous effort from the dispatchers involved in the flood response, who worked far beyond their regular shift times, and some who even stayed overnight so that they could help their communities.
