2024 Awards Nominations and Winners
TMHRA extends congratulations to all of the award nominees and winners. Thank you for the hard work you do for your cities.
View the nominations HERE and the winners HERE.
View winner photos below! If you wish to download a photo, right click on the photo and select “Save image as…”.
Scroll down below the photos to read about each award recipient.
HR Impact TMHRA Award ( population 25,000 and under)
City of Dickinson
City of Dickinson HR Department, lead by Kerilyn Bascle, implemented several crucial systems that have significantly enhanced HR operations. Notably, the introduction of a more sophisticated applicant tracking system has streamlined our hiring processes, ensuring efficient recruitment of top-tier talent. The newly established performance evaluation system has provided valuable insights, aiding in talent development and organizational growth. We have revamped our employee onboarding experience, creating a welcoming and structured process that has set a positive tone for new team members. Efforts in implementing training and policy software have empowered our staff with the tools needed for continuous learning and adherence to best practices. The HR Department overhauled the employee personnel policy, while transitioning from cumbersome paper records to efficient electronic systems, which has not only improved accessibility and accuracy but has also ensured compliance with evolving regulations.
HR Impact Award of Distinction ( population 25,000 and under)
City of Kerrville
City of Kerrville HR Department, led by Rebecca Priess, implemented NeoGov, a comprehensive HR software solution. The transition to NeoGov has revolutionized the way HR functions are managed within the organization. The implementation of NeoGov has streamlined recruitment processes, improved applicant tracking, and enhanced onboarding experiences for new hires.
Implementing NeoGov for the City of Kerrville’s HR department are both unique and significant due to their transformative impact on HR operations and organizational culture. The adoption of NeoGov has not only optimized HR processes but has also empowered employees with user-friendly tools and resources. Compared to the past, where manual processes were predominant, the introduction of NeoGov represents a quantum leap in efficiency and effectiveness. “
HR Impact Award of Honor ( population 25,000 and under)
City of Hewitt
City of Hewitt HR Department is a department of one serving 116 full time employees, run by Jessica Higgins. The department has been instrumental in changing the face of employee morale and health by researching and implementing new and innovative processes to ensure retention and work success through leadership training opportunities, employee meet-and-greets as well as “homerun to health” fitness challenges that benefit all employees.
HR Impact TMHRA Award ( population 25,001 and over)
City of McAllen
City of McAllen’s Human Resources team introduced the Leadership Development Program aimed at managers and supervisors with less than five years in their supervisory role. The goals of the Leadership Development Program were to help participants lead more confidently and effectively, create healthy teamwork resulting in improved morale, learn to set and achieve goals, retain and attract great talent, and create next generation of succession-ready leaders for the City of McAllen. Leadership Development Program content included sessions on Leadership vs. Management and Self-Care, Leadership and Personality, Situational Leadership, Empowerment and Accountability, Building Trust and Managing Conflict, Effective Team Communication, and a capstone project. For their capstone project, attendees presented implemented earned during the Leadership Development Program and how they had implemented it in their professional journey. All capstone projects can be viewed at this link.
HR Impact Award of Distinction ( population 25,001 and over)
City of New Braunfels
City of New Braunfels HR Department is recognized for its Learning and Development programming, specifically the leadership continuum model. With 50% of voluntary separations in the organization caused by team members leaving for other organizations with better compensation/career advancement opportunities, the City has continued to focus on the development of a total rewards strategy which prioritizes career pathing, coaching, and support. The leadership continuum currently includes the following elements:
• Ongoing HR Trainings – HR’s Learning Management System (LMS), Thinkific, Texas Municipal League (TML) in-person trainings, and other opportunities offered through HR as well as departmental sponsored training.
• NB Connect Program – Opportunity to learn more about the City’s departments and their daily operations through a year-long shadowing and relationship-building program
• Reaching Internal Service Excellence (R.I.S.E.) Supervisor and Administrative Professionals Training – Online trainings provided on City of New Braunfels processes and policies to assist team members in their daily work, such as timekeeping, performance management, budgeting, purchasing, and more.
• Learning Effectively, Achieving Progress (L.E.A.P.) program – In-person, soft skills leadership development focused on topics such as communication, conflict resolution, managing a team, time management, and more.
• New Braunfels Leadership Academy (NBLA) – Eight month in-person leadership discovery program to dig into self-awareness and your personal/professional leadership journey
• Servant Leadership Summit – Program designed specifically for Fire and Police leadership to discuss and apply the most relevant and powerful servant leadership practices, with focused case study discussions with their peers.
HR Impact Award of Honor ( population 25,001 and over)
City of McKinney
The City of McKinney HR Department identified they we were not meeting internal expectation on recruitment and retention. In some areas, this proved to be impacting operations. Based on employee feedback, the department determined salary may be playing a large role. While market studies showed the city was competitive with the market, the data reflected something different. The department took an innovative approach and began decoupling our departmental salary data. Now multiple departments with their own pay plans. While position titles may be similar, and in some cases their duties, their overall scope of work did not align. The market studies for a full survey did not take this into account. Separating the pay plans has resulted in our Public Works department going from a 45 position vacancy rate to an 11 position vacancy rate within the last year. We are now able to look at employee salaries according to their functional areas resulting in higher recruitment numbers and less turnover.
Alone or Almost aLone Ranger TMHRA Award
Laura Capps
Laura Capps’s achievements are particularly remarkable given our city’s context—a small community of fewer than 8,000 residents with a constrained budget. Her successful digitization of the HR Department, against the backdrop of limited resources, underscores her ability to innovate and implement cost-effective solutions. The transition to digital processes is not only a testament to Laura’s resourcefulness but also to her strategic vision in enhancing operational efficiency and compliance within such a tight fiscal framework.Furthermore, Laura’s instrumental role in forming an employee engagement committee directly contributed to the city being honored as a 2022 Houston Chronicle Top Workplace. This accolade reflects the significant strides made in fostering a culture of engagement and satisfaction among staff, an achievement that is especially commendable given the typical challenges in securing staff buy-in within small municipal settings. The committee’s efforts under Laura’s guidance have markedly improved staff engagement, showcasing her exceptional leadership and deep understanding of the dynamics of employee motivation and involvement.
Alone or Almost aLone Ranger Award of Distinction
Veronica Gamboa
Our staff is unique in that we all have multiple roles here in Edgecliff Village. Veronica is the glue that holds all of it together. In a time when folks want to work less, Veronica selflessly says “yes” and accepts all challenges and responsibilities head-on with only the betterment and advancement of her staff, her council, and the citizens she has faithfully served for so many years. She ensures that the city operates smoothly, efficiently, and in a manner that serves the best interests of the community. She is thoroughly adept at management, communication, and strategic planning, and possesses a deep understanding of public administration and local government operations. The impact of her work is evident in the improved operational efficiency and heightened employee morale within our organization. Veronica’s efforts have not only optimized our HR processes but have also fostered a supportive and dynamic work environment. What makes Veronica truly stand out is her unwavering commitment to excellence, combined with a genuine care for the well-being of our employees. She has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to lead with compassion, integrity, and a forward-thinking approach
Alone or Almost aLone Ranger Award of Honor
Christina Arquette
Christina, in her time with the City of Bridgeport, has transformed the Human Resources department from a good small-town department that assisted employees into one that now proactively serves the organization, the individual employees and their families. Within the last several years, Christina has coordinated and implemented the City of Bridgeport’s first Comprehensive Compensation study conducted by a professional outside agency. This study has resulted in a much higher retention rate amongst existing employees and attracted a high caliber of new employees, resulting in a rare 100% fully staffed organization for a period.
Christina has created additional and exciting awards such as the BEAR award (Bridgeport Employees Achieving Recognition) which allows employees to recognize other employees’ excellence in performance, teamwork and dedication. Christina modernized the Bridgeport Human Resources Department with efforts such as moving personnel files to a searchable and archivable digital format. She has developed and implemented additional and consistent training for City staff. She has updated and enhanced the City’s personnel policy manual and is working to make it more accessible in an online and digital format. She has been instrumental in reactivating the City’s EAC, (Employee Advisory Committee), a resource to empower employees to assist the organization to flourish by highlighting proactive changes to better the organization.
Rising Star (25,000 and Under) TMHRA Award
Fallan Carrillo
For the past 20 years, the City of Princeton’s HR Department solely consisted of one person. This individual also shared other responsibilities as well. As a result, the City’s HR functions were minimal, only completing tasks that were necessary to sustain compliance. Once Carrillo joined the department, not only did she sustain compliance, but she also implemented necessary procedures and processes to benefit the employees and the organization. The City lacked inclusiveness, employee transparency, and employee appreciation. With zero funds allocated to employee appreciation, Carrillo found innovative ways to improve challenging areas. An average of 81% of employees read the monthly employee newsletters. Carrillo was able to get the Council engaged with staff, utilizing council meetings for employee acknowledgment. Implementing 4-day work weeks reduced the number of call-outs throughout the organization and boosted morale. Employees are more open to speaking with Employee Experience; something that was not common when the department was called Human Resources.
Rising Star (25,001 and Over) TMHRA Award
Karissa Steer
During her time as a generalist and as an HR analyst, Karissa worked with leaders from various departments to understand the nature of their work as well as key opportunities for learning and the development of their employees. She then separated these opportunities into ladder positions with specific requirements that must be completed to obtain each position. Once these ladders were completed, Karissa then presented the career ladders to the city manager for final approval.
Rising Star Award of Distinction (25,000 and Under)
Pamela Sanders
Pamela spearheaded a comprehensive compensation study aimed at ensuring fair and competitive pay for employees within the organization. This involved meticulously analyzing market trends, benchmarking against industry standards, and evaluating internal salary structures to optimize compensation strategies. The study’s findings provided valuable insights for strategic decision-making and enhancing employee satisfaction and Pamela demonstrated her commitment to professional growth and excellence by successfully obtaining certification from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). This certification signifies her proficiency in various HR domains, including workforce planning, talent acquisition, employee relations, and compensation management. By earning this prestigious credential, Pamela has validated her expertise and commitment to upholding the highest standards of HR practices, further establishing herself as a trusted leader in the field.
Rising Star Award of Distinction (25,001 and Over)
Stacy Martinez
Ms. Martinez had a vision for a more efficient and automated accident and injury reporting system. Supervisors and employees were very confused and often unaware of our processes, which were paper-based, slow and often required multiple levels of response before anything could be initiated. She felt their confusion, and wanted something better.
Rising Star Award of Honor (25,000 and Under)
Alana Cohen
As is the case in the public administration and human resource profession, high quality employees do not work in a self-servicing manner. The greatest among us tackle the biggest goals to complement the strengths of our team and create a better life for the citizens or employees we serve. Alana fulfills this tenet and exceeds what it means to be an effective public servant to her coworkers and our residents. Alana does not select projects because of their ease, but because of the resulting impact they will have on our team. She is a warrior, champion, and confidant to the employees of Lucas and her daily actions and commitment to high quality service delivery prove this time and time again. No mountain is too big for Alana to move, and she would likely profess that she’d move a bigger mountain just for the challenge. Her grace in managing an HR department staffed independently by herself proves often how much passion and resilience can do to better the lives of those around you. Much like a star, Alana’s impact shines brightly on everyone around; our residents, City Council, and our employees.
Rising Star Award of Honor (25,001 and Over)
Cailin Cronin
In FY2021, to supplement discussions with department heads, the Human Resources team reignited the Safety Coaches, previously the Safety Committee, to ensure an organization-wide focus on creating a safe workplace. This new approach is based on partnership, where the Safety Coaches function to celebrate work that is done correctly, safely, and in the best interest of the City and its team members. This committee discusses risk and safety questions, issues, and claims trends to implement recommendations for a safer work environment. With oversight from the HR Manager, the Safety Coaches also work to develop, implement, and educate on employee safety and accountability programs and procedures. Traditional approaches are often reactive, with problems only addressed after a worker is injured, a new standard or regulation is published, or an outside inspection finds a problem that must be fixed. The Safety Coaches recognize finding and fixing hazards before they cause injury or illness is a far more effective approach, which begins with education and empowering employees to create and maintain a safe workplace.
As a part of our proactive efforts for risk and safety, specific training needs will continue to be identified and prioritized. The intent of expanding our safety training is to reduce hazards, promote a safe work environment, eliminate workforce loss, all costs associated with accidents, and build an accountable and proactive safety culture. Cailin developed an internal CDL program for employees to complete their theory requirement with HR, partnered with JJ Keller, and the driving portion with their department/division peers and leadership. This program has successfully promoted 4 team members in the organization from non-CDL to CDL positions since its implementation in March 2022.
TMHRA HR Management Professional of the Year, 25,000 and Under
Melanie Glaze
Melanie Glaze joined the City of Bellaire as HR Director on May 22, 2023. After several years of significant change (new council, vacancy in the city manager position for two years, Covid pandemic, and two changes in the HR lead role in six months), Melanie faced a mountain of work and an unhealthy work culture. She dug right in on day one – visiting employees in their workplaces to get to know them, assessing our compliance with laws and best practices, investigating complaints, and helping her peers fill long-standing vacancies.
In just ten months, and with the help of her peers, Melanie has turned this ship around. Melanie’s greatest contributions are employees’ increased confidence in human resources and improved employee morale. This is due to her consistent application of policies and procedures, her positive can-do attitude, and her willingness to tackle the hard stuff, timely, with professionalism and tact. She is smart, fun, and doesn’t give up. She’s driven culture change and advocated for employees both at the organizational level (medical and retirement benefits, additional floating holiday, increased holiday gift cards), and the individual level (for example, by going to bat for a retiree who is having difficulty with Mission Square – she is a dog on a bone, and it’s amazing what she can do when she sets her mind to something!).
Specific projects of note include her leadership of our transition from Mission Square to Empower and her suggestion to add a plan to our medical benefits – both of which saved employees money and were smart business for the city. Melanie identified and corrected some time coding errors, implemented time clocks for nonexempt employees across the city, and transitioned the Payroll function back to Finance for oversight and to better allocate staff resources (our HR Department is a staff of two, inclusive of Melanie). She initiated and completed a compensation and classification study, as well as two staffing studies for city departments. The City of Bellaire is in an infinitely better place now that Melanie is here. She is outstanding in her role as HR Director.
TMHRA HR Management Professional of the Year, 25,001 and over
Lindsey Cox
In just under three years with the City of New Braunfels, Lindsey has been instrumental in many impactful initiatives. She completed an organization-wide department study (uniform and non-uniform), examining 20+ benchmark cities and individually reviewing over 200 organizational titles. Lindsey managing this process saved the organization thousands of dollars versus hiring an outside consultant, and had the most timely implementation of pay increases since we began administering market studies; she administered piloting the first Strategic Government Resources (SGR) Public Safety Leadership Summit for City of New Braunfels Police and Fire Department leaders, developed by SGR content and custom content created by Lindsey; she partnered in rolling out a mandatory “soft skills” series for all City leadership – course content includes navigating difficult conversations, communication, emotional intelligence, and teamwork with both internal and external speakers
HR Management Professional of the Year Award of Distinction, 25,000 and under
Passion Hayes
Passion Hayes is the consummate human resources professional. Since January 2008, Ms. Hayes has led the Human Resources Department in Addison, Texas overseeing all functions of the department with a particular focus on engagement, employee-led innovation efforts, and specialized initiatives aimed at transferring knowledge, service delivery expectations, and organizational culture to the next generation of employees. Her efforts are the reason why the Town of Addison was recognized as a Top Workplace in 2022 by the Dallas Morning News. In 2023, Ms. Hayes was further recognized for her leadership and promoted to Deputy City Manager. Ms. Hayes now oversees multiple departments including Police, Fire, Airport, Parks and Recreation, and Special Events.
HR Management Professional of the Year Award of Distinction, 25,001 and over
Pamela Williams
Hired by the City of Abilene in 2019 as an Assistant Director of Human Resources, Pamela quickly established herself by successfully overseeing our conversion from a legacy payroll server system and two external non-integrated systems for timekeeping and recruitment into a contemporary cloud-based Human Resources Information System (HRIS) Ceridian Dayforce. As the Project Manager for this conversion, she was responsible for the design, build and implementation of the various Dayforce modules including recruitment/onboarding, timekeeping, scheduling, payroll administration, compensation, performance management, succession planning and training.
HR Management Professional of the Year Award of Honor, 25,000 and under
Gerardo Villareal
Gerardo “Jerry” Villarreal started with the City of Palmview in 2017. At the time, the Human Resource Department was non-existent. From the time that Mr. Villarreal started until now, the number of employees has doubled. He single handedly started a very much needed HR Department. He has excelled at his role, always thinking of ways to make the City of Palmview the best place to work, and having the City’s and Employees’ best interest in mind. He was a single employee department for a municipality for 4 years, and in 2021 he hired a HR Clerk who he has mentored and valued immensely.
HR Management Professional of the Year Award of Honor 25,001 & over
Lizette Gomez
As part of her role, she assists with oversight of the Human Resources department which consists of the following divisions: Human Resources, Benefits & Wellness, Risk Management and Civil Service. Ms. Gomez has over 19 years of public sector experience within the fields of human resources, risk management, benefit administration and public finance. Throughout her career she has focused on policy and procedure planning and implementation, and development of processes and improvement for neighboring local governments with innovation.
Ms. Gomez earned her Master of Public Affairs form the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She earned a Bachelor of Applied Technology in Technology Management, Associate of Applied Science in Accounting and Accounting Certificate from South Texas College. Ms. Gomez also possesses the credential of IPMA-Senior Certified Professional and was awarded the Rising Star Award by TX-PRIMA for her innovative program designs in the risk management field.
Additionally, he helped oversee the transition of the Fire Department/EMS to assure everything ran smoothly as they moved to 24 hour shifts. In 2022 the City was able to cover Employees Health Insurance premiums at 100% for the first time due to the diligent work Jerry did with the City’s insurance broker.
In addition to our department’s Leadership Team Development program, Pamela has been instrumental in cultivating municipal partnerships for our divisions across the state of Texas. Following last year’s TMHRA Conference, Pamela’s iron sharpens iron philosophy led her to network with the City of Brownsville’s Director of Organizational Development and Human Resources Perla Cepeda to coordinate an upfront seat to Brownsville’s Professional Development Program for our Assistant Director of Human Resources and Training Manager.
Her efforts are the reason why the Town of Addison was recognized as a Top Workplace in 2022 by the Dallas Morning News. In 2023, Ms. Hayes was further recognized for her leadership and promoted to Deputy City Manager. Ms. Hayes now oversees multiple departments including Police, Fire, Airport, Parks and Recreation, and Special Events.