Angela Foraker, Department of Health and Human Services

Ms. Foraker is a certified nursing assistant with the Hospital for the Chronically Ill. Recently, she noticed a resident was not leaving his room and was refusing personal care offerings. She offered to take him on a walk if he would allow her to provide personal care. He agreed. Ms. Foraker began taking him outside for walks, and walking him around the hospital, greeting everyone they saw. She kept this routine going for several months and now the resident looks forward to socializing and meeting people within the facility. Her actions with this resident improved his socialization skills, his overall health, and his quality of life.

Nadeim Ghoryani, Department of Technology and Information

Mr. Ghoryani is an ERP Senior Architect. Among several notable efforts this year, he championed a change to the way employee self-service was going to be implemented in the State’s new Identity Lifecycle Management solution, ensuring employees only need to sign up once for their self-service access. After getting input from business owners and other stakeholders, his suggested change provided users with a true single sign-on experience from hire through retirement. He also suggested and prototyped a new inquiry tool for the Department of Human Resources which provides them with a single location to see the employee information needed for Okta self-service accounts, limiting user confusion, and simplifying troubleshooting.

Robin Jenkins, Administrative Office of the Courts

Ms. Jenkins recently celebrated 35 years of service with the State. During this time she has shown leadership and inititive in several areas. For instance this year, Ms. Jenkins voluntarily reached out to leaders in the trial courts for their support and worked with partners at DHSS to start a summer youth volunteer program, putting kids who were aging out of the foster care system to work in the courts. In addition, she restructured the support services positions under her supervision, which resulted in substantial efficiencies by having employees who are cross-trained and can work in all three major operational areas.

Lisa Tingle, Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families

Ms. Tingle coordinates referrals for psychiatric residential treatment facilities (PRTFs) for our downstate teams. This year, due to vacancies, she has assisted upstate teams with making their PRTF referrals as well, seeking out programs that meet each individual youth's needs and keeping teams updated. At times, she has juggled up to 40 youth who need referrals, and often those youth have very specific and complex needs. On top of the PRTF referrals, Ms. Tingle has made several trips transporting youth, sometimes by plane, to and from residential programs. She always makes sure the youths are comfortable and calms their anxiety, especially about going to a new program.

Linda Velott, Department of Finance

Ms. Velott is the Operations Manager for the Lottery Office. Recently, she created a statistical report which discovered a question on an application that was creating a bottleneck. She worked quickly with DTI to have the question removed and communicated this change to the casinos. This improvement saves applicants effort and shaves days off of processing times. Shorter processing times means new hires get to work faster. Ms. Velott also initiated a change this year to the licensing process that is a challenge for key applicants employed by vendors. Her solution eliminated the need for the applicant/vendor to mail USBs or email sensitive documents to the Lottery.