Since 1995, awards presented at the Women of Color STEM Conference have honored excellence and underscored the under-representation of women in scientific and technical fields. For more than two decades, top employers have chosen the conference as the place to share best practices and strategies.

The Professional Achievement Award recognizes a mid-career professional with significant accomplishments in an engineering or technology company or government agency.

Stephanie E. Turner, vice president of inclusion, diversity, and social innovation at The MITRE Corporation, was presenter of the Professional Achievement in Industry Award during the 2020 Women of Color STEM Conference.

"Jenine Patterson has spent the last two decades solving problems for a safer world," said Turner in her introduction. "Jenine seeks out the thorniest, most pressing challenges—from national security threats arising from globalization to data management in federal law enforcement to, most recently, applying analytic best practices to help communities tackle entrenched poverty and racial inequities," Turner said.

Accepting the award, Patterson said she was honored to serve. She also recalled being told that she didn’t fit in or hadn't earned her spot. But she remained undeterred.

Tekia Govan was also a 2020 Professional Achievement Award winner. She is a project manager at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Currently, she is the lead reviewer of regulatory guidance for making digital instrumentation and control modifications to nuclear power plants.

“I cannot say enough about her ingenuity, dedication, and professionalism in managing her position and ensuring the projects were coordinated in an effective manner,” said Chris Miller in the Division of Reactor Oversight.

At the 2021 Women of Color STEM Conference, a research staff member at IBM described Changchang Liu as "an excellent role model and inspiration.”

Over the last four years, she has been selected as a member of the Committee of the Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge, which is hosted by the Public Safety Communications Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The Differential Privacy Synthetic Data Challenge features coding sprints to apply privacy methods to temporal map data. Temporal map data is of interest to the public safety community in applications such as optimizing response time, natural disaster response, epidemic tracking, demographic data, and civic planning. Yet, the ability to track a person's location over a period of time presents serious privacy concerns.

Large data sets containing personally identifiable information (PII) are valuable resources for research and policy analysis in a host of fields supporting America's First Responders in emergency planning and epidemiology.

Air Force Col. Regina Goff received a Professional Achievement in Government Award at the 18th annual Women of Color Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Conference. In 2013, she was chief of the financial analysis division at Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command. She had oversight of 400 budget professionals in the financial planning and fiscal execution of a $73 billion, multi-year budget.

2014 Professional Achievement Award winner Gwendolyn Bingham retired as a three-star U.S. Army Lieutenant General. One of her last military assignments was as assistant chief of staff for installation management for Army installations worldwide.

The daughter of an Army vet, Gwen Bingham joined the Quartermaster Corps after graduating from the University of Alabama. Starting as a second lieutenant, Bingham worked her way up the ranks and became a battalion commander at Fort Lee in 2000. Bingham rose to be the first female garrison commander at Fort Lee, serving in the position until 2008, when she became chief of staff to the facility's commanding general.

Two years later she assumed command of the Army Quartermaster School. As commandant, she oversaw the training of 20,000 soldiers. On April 22, 2011, Bingham was promoted to brigadier general. With that breakthrough, she became the first female quartermaster general of the army.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Latoya M. Manzey received a Professional Achievement Award at the 2021 Women of Color STEM Conference.

She is a deputy district commander in the Corps of Engineers, Louisville District. Throughout her career, she has worked to develop partnerships and participate in outreach efforts. She is active in the YMCA Black Achievers program and serves as an example through her service and success in inspiring the next generation to strive and obtain their goals and dreams.

Vanessa Espinoza is the deputy fire chief at Hill Air Force Base. She's responsible for safeguarding a base comprising 28,700 personnel, 1420 facilities, and $9.1 billion in assets.

Espinoza won the Professional Achievement Award at the 2022 Women of Color STEM Conference for helping women in her field find tangible solutions to quality-of-life issues.

Among her many accomplishments, she wrote a diversity and inclusion strategic plan and a health guide on pre and post-pregnancy issues at work for female firefighters that was adopted by the Department of Defense. She has also written briefs for leaders impacting 15,000 firefighters.

Espinoza has trained 995 Airmen and earned her stripes as a master military training instructor. She leads 144 Airmen and civilians, overseeing a $1.4 million budget. She also created Facebook pages focused on women firefighters, and solved personal protective equipment sizing issues for 11,000 firefighters.

She volunteers with military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and Hispanic nursing home residents, and also hosts fitness retreats. Channeling lessons from her childhood, she mentors children in foster care, teaching them financial and life skills.