For immediate release: Jan. 22, 2018
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta awarded its annual President's Award for Excellence to David Beckman, Kim Davidson, Amy Hennessy, and Jon Mikolajczak in the Atlanta office, and Sharnell Sanders-Brown in the New Orleans Branch. Raphael Bostic, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Fed, presented the awards in a recent ceremony. The President's Award recognizes Sixth Federal Reserve District employees who have distinguished themselves by their outstanding performance.
Beckman is a director in the Retail Payments Office's (RPO) application delivery services. Beckman, who has been with the RPO for 10 years, was instrumental in the completion of the RPO's Same-Day Automated Clearinghouse initiative, which required significant changes to the operating software the RPO used daily. He worked across teams and districts to ensure that the project moved forward and the teams involved in the process were well informed.
Davidson joined the Atlanta Fed's financial management and planning team as an intern 24 years ago. She was one of the Bank's early remote workers, and her willingness to work after hours and around the schedules of others has helped her ensure that procurement issues do not lead to headaches. She managed the bidding process and the transition of the Miami Branch's food service. Recently, when the System's national waste vendor provider gave short notice that it would not renew services, she quickly secured local waste collection services for the Atlanta, Birmingham, Miami, and New Orleans offices.
Hennessy has been with the Atlanta Fed for eight years and currently serves as the director of outreach and economic education. A former teacher, she doubled the number of teacher workshops in her first year at the Bank. Since then, she has grown the Atlanta Fed's economic education program, which reaches more teachers than any other Federal Reserve district. Under her leadership, the economic education program has won 10 curriculum awards from the National Association of Economic Educators.
Mikolajczak, who has been with the Bank for 12 years, is a lead analyst who works in the Supervision and Regulation Division's (S&R) talent management program. He established a framework for the division's talent management handbook and guided his team in building and introducing a management tool that captures the division's critical information, including examinations, performance feedback, FedLearn training, and skills competencies. He is a leader on the Bank's Diversity Advisory Council and works to integrate diversity and inclusion practices throughout S&R.
Sanders-Brown is a senior business analyst in the law enforcement unit who has been with the Bank for 23 years. Recently, she helped her unit develop responses to some questions raised by an outside assessment. She has developed a number of innovations in her department's processes, including a departmental task list that codifies processes and a compliance program that improved the department's performance on internal audits by helping to ensure that everyone involved is held to a standard of integrity and thoroughness.
The Atlanta Fed is a part of the nation's central banking system, which Congress created in 1913. The Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy by influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices, supervises and regulates banking institutions, and helps ensure that the nation's payments systems operate smoothly. The Atlanta Fed serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, and Georgia and sections of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The Atlanta Fed participates in setting national monetary policy, supervises numerous commercial banks in the Sixth District, and provides a variety of financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. government.