Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division’s own awards program manager won an award herself. Sue Rossi, from Carderock’s Human Resource Division, received the 2020 Philip Heiler Award for Human Resources Excellence. Interestingly, Rossi helped draft that award criteria six years ago.
The Philip Heiler Award for Human Resources Excellence was established in 2014 by the Warfare Centers Workforce Council to honor individuals in the Warfare Centers’ Human Resources community for their outstanding accomplishments.
Named after Mr. Philip Heiler, former Human Resources Director at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, the award is based on the following criteria:
- An extraordinarily successful recent accomplishment or demonstrated career achievement in establishing or improving high value support products or processes.
- Typically, the award will recognize exceptional levels of achievement in the face of difficult undertakings.
- Demonstrated personal originality, initiative, innovation, commitment and perseverance in achieving beneficial impact to important agency interests.
- Positive impact on a major program or process such that there is a significant improvement in service, economy or effectiveness.
“Ms. Rossi’s commitment to maintain the highest standards of customer service permeates every task that she undertakes,” Meg McConnell said, Rossi’s supervisor. “Recently, she has successfully embraced unprecedented events and challenges within the Awards Program to not only benefit Carderock Division, but the Warfare Centers, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the Department of the Navy, as well. Her leadership and peers within NAVSEA recognize her as a model Awards Program Manager, who fully understands her tasking and continually meets or exceeds the assigned program goals.”
Furthermore, according to the award citation, “Susan Rossi’s contributions in the area of employee recognition and awards has resulted in her being considered as one of the most respected and knowledgeable External Awards Program practitioners within the System Command. Through her drive and passion to ensure employees are recognized, and her exceptional ability to get things done correctly and efficiently, Ms. Rossi ensures Carderock Division maintains a well-implemented employee recognition program that remains meaningful to its diverse workforce.”
Rossi, who became a Naval Surface Warfare Carderock employee on her 20th birthday in 1984, found out that she had been nominated for the award by accident, and she said she was quite surprised.
“What I’ve done over the years is gather the votes and collect the nominations,” Rossi said. “After sending an email asking for everyone to get their votes to me, one of the directors of human resources forwarded his vote to me, but in the email chain I found that I had been nominated, as well. So, of course, I bowed out of the process at that point.”
Rossi is the sixth individual to win the award since its creation, with a group effort receiving the award in 2019.