The Superstar Foundation, an organization that seeks to pay great human services professionals great pay for great work, has named Kristi O’Neill, Career Navigator for Seattle Jobs Initiative in Seattle, Wash., a 2012 Veronica Award winner. These awards are given to direct service professionals who demonstrate outstanding performance in promoting transformational relationships with the participants they serve.
Kristi has been recognized for her work to help clients overcome multiple barriers that prevent them from achieving success in their higher education and career pursuits—all of her clients are low-income, low-skill adults, 50% have less than a high school diploma, and many are homeless or have criminal records. By building trust and strong relationships, Kristi is very successful in helping her clients achieve success, with her clients overcoming more than 100 barriers in 2012. Her positive enthusiasm for the success of each of her participants has earned her the title of “life cheerleader” by her clients. Her work has had a lifelong impact on her clients, as many develop the autonomy to enable them to overcome barriers without her support once they enter the workforce.
“I am proud to have been nominated and amazed to be a Veronica Award winner! It is a rare and magnificent moment when social workers are recognized for the work that they do,” Kristi said. “I only wish that I could share this with all of my deserving colleagues who also go above and beyond on a daily basis. I personally am rewarded daily through the individuals that I serve and their success in their education and employment is what keeps me going every day.”
Since 2008, the Superstar Foundation has used the Veronica Awards to recognize human services professionals who keep the transformational relationship with their participants at the core of their work and who demonstrate the effectiveness of that approach through measured outcomes. Veronica Award recipients receive a check from the Superstar Foundation and have their stories memorialized at Social Solutions’ office in Baltimore and in an online hall of fame. In addition to Kristi, staff members from Juma Ventures, Congreso de Latinos Unidos, and West Sound Youth for Christ have received a total of $20,000 in Veronica Awards from the Superstar Foundation this year.
The awards themselves are named after the mother of entrepreneur Steve Butz, as his mother was committed to various social causes and laid the foundation of a strong social consciousness in her children.
“I am deeply proud of the 2012 Veronica Award winners. They are not only doing great work but have the data to back it up,” said Steve Butz, CEO of Social Solutions. “These human service workers can proudly say they are the best in their field and can inspire their colleagues to learn how to become even better at improving lives because they have both the data and inspirational success stories.”
The Superstar Foundation will be accepting applications in fall 2013 for next year’s Veronica Awards; information will become available over the coming months at www.superstarfoundation.org.
About Social Solutions
Social Solutions is the leading provider of performance management software for human services, connecting efforts to outcomes, people to social services, and service providers and communities to funders. The company’s Efforts to Outcomes (ETO™) software goes beyond case management, and enables public, private, and nonprofit organizations, such as Harlem Children’s Zone®, Catholic Charities, Annie E. Casey Foundation, HUD, and cities such as Boston and Hartford to collaborate, save time, and improve service quality and effectiveness. Thousands of service providers, collaboratives, funders, evaluators, and government organizations use ETO software as they work with over 12 million participants each day.
About Superstar Foundation
The Superstar Foundation is an organization committed to recognizing and rewarding great human service professionals for the invaluable work that they do. Dedicated to expanding the use of highly intentional, transformative relationships as the core of social services, the Superstar Foundation has administered the annual Veronica Awards since 2008. The Veronica Awards highlight and reward the efforts of the high-performing direct service professionals who embody this philosophy and have the data to demonstrate their performance.
