GovLoop is proud to announce the 16th annual NextGen Public Service Award winners for superior public service and achievement!

The awards recognize deserving individuals across federal, state, and local government who are selected from the public service community for their intelligence, exuberance, and dedication to improving and invigorating government.

Please review the winners below, along with a brief description of their contributions. For more details about their work, what their nominators had to say, and their reasons for continuing in public service, check out our 2025 NextGen Public Service Award booklet.

Advancing Tech Champ

Richard Chan

Richard Chan ensures that agency IT projects adhere to governance standards and effectively deliver value enterprise-wide. To make project information more accessible and actionable, Chan created a
Microsoft Power BI dashboard that shows key performance indicators and other critical metrics.
The innovation eliminated silos and significantly improved transparency across divisions.

Communicator of the Year

Robert Guillemin

The Pollution Prevention (P2) program, which Robert Guillemin coordinates, provides grants, guidance, and other resources to help businesses avoid generating pollution. He came up with an innovative way to build on that idea: helping recipients in a specific business sector coordinate their work on prevention measures, including BetterBev, a regional program that offers tools to help beverage firms assess and improve their operations, both to prevent pollution and reduce costs.

Danilia Vandersee

Preventing and responding to employee harassment complaints and resolving conflicts before they affect the mission at Robins Air Force Base requires informing 30,000 civilian, contract and uniformed personnel about programs and services. Danilia Vandersee discovered employees weren’t getting that information, often because they had limited computer access. To fix that, she developed and distributed physical
marketing materials, including fliers and brochures.

Innovator of the Year

Matthew Mielke

The Office of Regional Outreach and Project Delivery provides grants and guidance to localities, helping them undertake railroad projects that improve the movement of people and goods across their region — whether by a small, short-line railroad or a massive passenger rail line. Matthew Mielke led an effort to streamline and standardize several processes, reducing the time needed to write and negotiate grant agreements among stakeholders and addressing potential obstacles that could slow projects later on.

Michelle Mooney

Michelle Mooney oversees two policymaking boards that advise Salt Lake City’s mayor and City Council — the Human Rights and Racial Equity in Policing commissions — and is a liaison between the mayor’s office and Utah’s Community Partners Against Hate coalition. She fosters belonging and collaboration with her work ethic, local-level expertise, and commitment to transparency and accountability.

Outstanding Colleague

Ana Medrano

Ana Medrano manages the business and budget operations of both the Human Resources and Administrative Services divisions in NSF.  Her role is to ensure that those operations are strategically and financially in line with leadership’s vision and that they represent an effective allocation of agency resources. Medrano has elevated the two divisions, making them more responsive and agile.

David Raley

As lead on both digital customer experience and IT transformation and modernization efforts, David Raley saw how outdated software acquisition and development processes, combined with slow government compliance requirements, added years to the adoption of new digital services. He put together a team to create a comprehensive transformation strategy and established strategic partnerships, streamlining the path to authorization to under 30 days.

Manager of the Year

Deena Bower

Deena Bower oversees training and leadership development services for more than 19,000 county employees in 23 departments. As part of that effort, she implemented a comprehensive talent management platform that helps employees access training and advancement opportunities,
assists managers with performance assessment and succession planning and allows the county to better track and report on its compliance with hiring regulations. She is also a strong mentor to her
employees.

Brynn Fogerty

Brynn Fogerty supervises a team that runs HR in Jackson County’s 15-branch Library District. As the district’s first employee when it became self-run, she created from scratch all its HR policies and procedures and built a library workforce that reflects the community it serves, thanks to her emphasis on robust, collaborative recruitment. She has become an HR leader in Oregon’s public library sphere.

*There are ten 2025 NextGen Public Service Award winners, but at the time of this blog’s publication, only nine were permitted to be recognized during the government shutdown, which has affected agency approval.