Announcing the 2020 Route Fifty Navigator Awards Winners
The view of the Charlotte, North Carolina skyline. Charlotte's assistant city manager Taiwo Jaiyeoba is one of five winners for the 2020 Navigator Awards. SHUTTERSTOCK/Kevin Ruck
Connecting state and local government leaders
Here are the teams and individuals we are honoring for tackling challenging problems and coming up with innovative solutions.
Route Fifty is excited to announce the winners of the 2020 Navigator Awards, which honor excellence in state and local government in five categories: The Electeds, The Leaders, The Allies, The Tech Innovators and The Next Generation.
For five years, Route Fifty has honored individuals and teams who either work in or with state, county and municipal governments and who have demonstrated an ability to implement a creative solution that improves public sector services and the communities they serve.
The Route Fifty editorial staff identified the five winners—one in each category—from nominations sent in by our readers. We elected them based on three measurements: innovation, implementation and outcomes.
Here are our winners for 2020.
- The Electeds: Alderman Robin Rue Simmons and team in Evanston, Illinois, for an initiative to provide reparations for the Black community, which will be funded from taxes on recreational marijuana sales.
- The Leaders: Taiwo Jaiyeoba in Charlotte, North Carolina for building a custom board game, Growing Better Places Board Game, that got local residents involved in planning the city's future. This project is part of the city's larger efforts to build a vision for 2040.
- The Allies: The team at Johns Hopkins University for their Covid-19 dashboard.
- The Tech Innovators: Carlos Rivero for spearheading Virginia's Framework for Addiction Analysis and Community Transformation, a secure data-sharing platform that helps Virginia’s communities combat the opioid crisis.
- The Next Generation: Geneva Hooten for her work leading the Colorado Department of Transportation's Innovation and Improvement Initiative that builds the creative and inventive skills of front-line employees to improve larger processes through Lean Rapid Improvement Events, and smaller ones through Lean Everyday Ideas.
The 2020 winners will be announced as part of the Route Fifty Future Cities digital summit. You can visit the Navigator Awards page on the Future Cities site to learn more about these remarkable achievements.
Congratulations to all our winners and finalists!