2002 Infinite Mile Award Recipients

“I regret that my obligations as a trustee of the College Board require me to be at a meeting of the Board’s executive committee in New York City during this awards lunch. Acknowledging and celebrating our colleagues’ contributions to MIT and to each other are among the most rewarding moments in our organizational lives. So, on the whole, I’d rather be in Cambridge.

Too infrequently do we stop to reward the outcomes of our individual contributions – making MIT as good as it can be (and mostly that’s the best!) – but at least we’re doing that annually now and at this moment.

And I’m pleased to have helped make that happen. But what we really internalize is not the exclamation points but the run-on sentences of daily life – the pleasures of the process, the residue of experience we take home every evening, sometimes very late.

Even as we celebrate professional delivery today, we revel in the personal goodness of everyone gathered. Thank you all – award recipients and celebrants alike – for giving joy and meaning to the hard work we all revel in.”

As Design Manager in the Publishing Services Bureau, you have skillfully helped MIT clients, meeting complex graphic design needs, providing overall art direction for myriad projects, and consulting on how best to achieve the goals of publications. You are extremely adept at knowing how you can be of most use to a particular project or meeting, often leading meetings actively but also moving into the role of consultant when those skills are needed most. You are committed to helping educate clients and the Institute community about design, but you remain open-minded and non-judgmental, always answering questions with courtesy and respect. Your patience, intellectual connection to projects, and ability to really listen to clients have combined to make you an exceptional contributor to MIT’s communications efforts.

Your work in support of the many activities of the Women’s League has brought you in touch with hundreds of volunteers and thousands of members of the MIT community. You bring your creativity and enthusiasm to an astonishing array of projects-from a clothing drive to provide international students with interview attire to the Institute’s annual observance of World AIDS Day. Your have an extraordinary ability to encourage volunteer involvement and to draw out the best in everyone with whom you work. You make all those who participate in Women’s League programs feel welcome, and your care and concern help newcomers get their bearings in a large, complex institution. Your working style and wonderful personality enrich our community.

Co-workers have called you the perfect colleague-not only a consummate professional in your own work for the President’s Office, but also deeply committed to the human side of the workplace. Your organizational skills and good working relationships with offices across the Institute allow you to orchestrate myriad programs and special events with aplomb. Your active willingness to pitch in and help to get a job done-in other offices as well as your own-has built a much stronger sense of teamwork and community along the second floor of the main corridor. Your inventive humor is accompanied by a keen sensitivity to the needs of others, and your thoughtfulness is always appreciated. We recognize you as a role model not only because of what you do but how you do it.

As I reflect on the past year, I am reminded that the moments I felt proudest to work at MIT were when Dr. Vest had spoken on an important issue or communicated his concern about events affecting the MIT community. His consistent leadership, thoughtful outspokenness, and use of MIT’s ‘convening power’ inspire me as an MIT employee.