Patty Nation Named 2016 ACTE Business Leader of the Year
August 10, 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 10, 2015
Contact: Sean Lynch
slynch@acteonline.org, 703-683-9312
Patty Nation Named 2016 ACTE Business Leader of the Year
ALEXANDRIA, VA – The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) and its Board of Directors announce the 2016 ACTE Business Leader of the Year: Patty Nation, Director of Global Corporate and Community Engagement for Xilinx, Inc. (based in San Jose, California). The ACTE Business Leader of the Year award celebrates the contributions and achievements of an executive from the business community who has demonstrated a solid and sustained commitment to improving career and technical education (CTE).
As the Director of Global Corporate Community Engagement at Xilinx, Patty Nation has led the company’s vision to help transform science and technology education in the 21st Century through the Xilinx Educational Ecosystem (EE). The EEis an integrated, articulated grant process that supports linked learning and career pathways focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The model provides over $500,000 dollars in grants to local school districts to support STEM programming, and relies on dedicated partnerships between educators, community leaders, corporations and non-profit organizations to identify and address education and workforce needs. “The pioneering efforts of the Xilinx Educational Ecosystem are poised to play a major role in solving this shortage of a ‘homegrown’ STEM CTE workforce,” says Donna Hope, Principal of Campbell Union High School District in San Jose, California.
Nation has been instrumental in driving Xilinx’s involvement with CTE, whether that is by leading in the development and launch of the EEmodel or supporting the social and emotional needs of students in her community through mentorship programs. Nation has also demonstrated a long-standing commitment to building STEM education for students – she successfully leveraged $250,000 to bring the Project Lead The Way program to three community schools, and to extend the program from two to four years. Furthermore, in 2014 she worked in partnership with local schools to host the first Xilinx-sponsored STEM academy, for which a team of Xilinx engineers and teachers spent a week teaching middle school students basic STEM fundamentals and CTE Engineering Standards. The EEin San Jose has fostered unprecedented levels of collaboration between elementary, middle, and high schools across three districts, and the successful model now impacts more than 8,200 students at Xilinx divisions in Colorado, Singapore, India and Ireland. As these and other stories exemplify, Nation has continuously advocated for and supported CTE in her community throughout her career and used her business background to help make her vision a reality.
The ACTE Excellence Awards promote excellence in CTE by recognizing individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to the community, programs that exemplify the highest standards and organizations that have conducted activities to promote and expand CTE programs. Award winners will be honored for their contributions to CTE at the annual ACTE Awards Banquet during ACTE’s CareerTech VISION 2015 in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 19, 2015. CareerTech VISION is ACTE’s signature event, with more than 3,000 attendees, career and CTE professionals from across the country and more than 300 workshops and sessions dedicated to improving the knowledge and capacity of CTE leaders. For more information on the Excellence Awards and the Awards Banquet, visit https://www.acteonline.org/awards.
About ACTE
The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE)is the nation’s largest not-for-profit association committed to the advancement of education that prepares youth and adults for successful careers. ACTE represents the community of CTE professionals, including educators, administrators, researchers, guidance counselors and others at all levels of education. ACTE is committed to excellence in providing advocacy, public awareness and access to resources, professional development and leadership opportunities.