✅ Nomination Examples

These stories are examples of the kinds of nominations we’re celebrating—thoughtful, grounded, and values-driven. They highlight people who protected integrity, stewarded data responsibly, and made systems more human—often without recognition. Use these as inspiration for your own nomination. It’s not about flashy titles or perfect prose. It’s about noticing the impact that matters.

📝 Need Inspiration?

Not sure how to frame your nomination? These examples show how others have honored quiet leadership, ethical insight, and meaningful contribution. You’ll notice each one reflects a core principle: protecting what matters, without needing the spotlight. Feel free to use these as a guide—but the best nominations come from your voice.

✍️ What Makes a Strong Nomination?

It’s not about who talks the loudest. It’s about who protects the work. These example nominations honor people who caught what others missed, fixed what wasn’t broken yet, and anchored their teams with care and clarity. If you know someone like that, we want to hear their story. Use these examples to get started.

Nomination #1: Alt National Parks

Archetype: The Jaded Guardians of the Alt National Park Service
I'm nominating the small team behind the Alt National Parks Twitter account — colleagues I’ve worked with quietly for years in and around the National Park Service. I won’t name them here, out of respect for the risks they’ve taken, but I can tell you exactly what kind of professionals they are: thoughtful, principled, and fiercely protective of the public trust.

Most people froze when federal agencies were ordered to pause public communication about climate change. These folks didn’t. They found a way — an anonymous, unofficial, encrypted way — to keep the facts visible. They created @AltUSNatParkService to inform the public, not make a scene. They posted archived climate pages, shared glacier data, and used their voices to remind the public that our parks are not just scenery — they’re science.

They didn’t leak. They didn’t grandstand. They curated, clarified, and preserved. That’s what makes them Jaded Guardians — not cynical, just realistic. They’ve seen how values can quietly erode under political pressure. And they chose to hold the line.

What impresses me most is that they never made it about themselves. Even now, most people don’t know who was behind the account. But I do. I’ve seen them show up to work like nothing happened. I’ve seen them train new rangers, update interpretive materials, and sit through endless meetings — while carrying this additional weight of moral clarity, unrecognized.

They’ve always believed the public deserves the truth. And when our institution hesitated, they found a way to keep that promise anyway. That’s what service looks like. That’s what leadership looks like when you don’t have the title but take responsibility anyway.

I’m nominating them because what they did mattered, and what they’re still doing — showing up daily with quiet conviction — matters even more. They reminded me that resistance doesn’t have to be loud. It just has to be anchored. And that sometimes, the best way to protect your values is to find a new way to speak.

They probably won’t wear the T-shirt in public. But they’ll get a kick out of it. And maybe they’ll hang it in the break room as a reminder that someone noticed. That someone saw what they protected — and how.

Ravi Mehta, Senior Software Engineer (mobility startup)

Archetype: The Insights Interpreter

I’m nominating Ravi Mehta, a senior engineer on our data systems team, because he’s the person who changed how we think about rider privacy — and did it without making anyone defensive or wrong.

A few months ago, we were building out a crash detection feature for our scooter platform. There was a lot of pressure to move fast — to capitalize on headlines, attract municipal contracts, and package “safety” as our next innovation wave. The team was excited, and the dashboards looked great. But Ravi paused and asked a question I’ll never forget:

“Do riders know how much of their crash-related location data we’re storing? And for how long?”

The room got quiet. Not because we didn’t care, but because we hadn’t really thought it through. We were operating with good intent, but no formal guardrails.

That afternoon, Ravi drafted a lightweight governance framework — not to slow us down, but to make sure we were building the right thing in the right way. He proposed anonymizing location data after a short window, adding an opt-in for deeper diagnostics, and hashing identifiers so we could still run trend analysis without retaining personal data.

It wasn’t just smart — it was trust-building. Legal reviewed it and signed off. Product integrated it. Marketing turned it into a differentiator.

What impressed me most wasn’t the technical fix (though it was elegant). It was how Ravi framed it. He didn’t position it as a compliance problem or a moral panic. He positioned it as good engineering, grounded in clarity, values, and foresight.

That’s why I see him as an Insights Interpreter. He connects the dots most of us don’t slow down to see — between data, human behavior, and long-term brand trust. He doesn’t just find meaning in the numbers. He helps the rest of us act on it.

Ravi never asked for recognition. But I want him to have it — not just for what he did, but for how he did it. Thoughtfully. Quietly. Without putting anyone on the defensive. That’s leadership. And frankly, in a tech space where people often talk about disruption without responsibility, what Ravi did felt revolutionary.

Give the man a T-shirt. Better yet, give him a seat at the next product strategy table. He’s already earned it.

Nomination #3: Lydia Tran, Operations Analyst (Insights AGENCEY)

Archetype: The Process Optimizer

I’m nominating Lydia Tran, one of our operations analysts, because I honestly don’t know where we’d be without her. She doesn’t lead with flash. She doesn’t chase credit. But behind every clean launch, smooth handoff, or audit that doesn’t result in a fire drill — there’s Lydia.

Most people don’t even see what she does. That’s kind of the point. Her whole job is to make things work better before they break. She’s the one who spotted that our intake form for client onboarding was dumping into two different CRMs. She traced it, fixed it, and added a silent alert in our shared Slack channel that flags mismatches in real time. No one asked her to do it. She just saw the pattern and quietly closed the loop.

Same with our internal project tracking. The system was bloated, overbuilt, and nobody trusted it. Lydia didn’t complain. She sat in on two sprint reviews, mapped the friction, and designed a simplified workflow that reduced steps by 40% without losing any reporting logic. The thing is — she didn’t present it like a hero. She pitched it as “a small update,” then rolled it out with such a calm presence that it felt like the tool had just matured on its own.

That’s why I think of her as a Process Optimizer. She’s not trying to disrupt anything. She’s not trying to control anything. She’s just trying to help us spend less time patching things and more time doing the work that actually matters.

The other thing? She does it with an enormous amount of care. Lydia always asks, “Will this feel good for the person using it?” Not just “Does it scale?” Not just “Is it efficient?” But does it make the work more human, more coherent, more useful?

I think that kind of thinking is rare. And I think it deserves recognition.

So I’m nominating her. Not because she wants it. But because she deserves it. Because the work of unblocking, simplifying, and making systems kind is real leadership — even if it doesn’t look like the stuff we usually reward.

If this campaign is about lifting up the people who keep organizations aligned without needing a spotlight, then Lydia is exactly who you’re talking about.

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