The Ruby Award
Around the world, many women are working to improve the lives of women and girls. Some women work to improve conditions for women and girls through their personal or volunteer efforts; others do so through professional avenues. The Soroptimist Ruby Award, formerly the Soroptimist Making a Difference for Women Award, is designed to honor these women.
Although not Soroptimists, their work helps promote the issues that are important to Soroptimists, while offering inspirational stories about how to make a difference in the lives of women. In the past, Soroptimists honored women and businesses through the three awards programs—Women of Distinction, Women Helping Women and Advancing the Status of Women. This award streamlines the previous recognition program and makes it easier for clubs to honor these women and publicize the program.
The board of directors decided to honor the program with a new and unique name and polled Soroptimists around the world to help select it. The Soroptimist Ruby Award: For Women Helping Women honors the first federation President Ruby Lee Minar. Ruby is also a gemstone associated with wisdom, importance, vitality, strength, power and love: All words embodying the award recipients.
This award honors women who are making extraordinary differences in the lives of other women. Examples would be a woman who helps to establish a domestic violence shelter, a woman who starts a mentoring program for at-risk girls, or a woman who lobbies her company to provide on-site child care. This program will give the club and the entire organization the opportunity to say “thank you” and encourage others to explore ways to assist women. A Ruby Award recipient should be a woman who:
has worked to improve the lives of women and girls
has had a significant impact on the lives of women and girls
would inspire and encourage other women
Interested in applying for the Ruby Award?
If you know of a woman who should be a recipient of this award, please contact Awards Chair, Nancy Muller at [email protected].
Submissions must be received by December 1.
Congratulations to our previous recipients!
2011 – LeeAnne Stigers-Genasci
2012 – Jennifer Gurecki
2013 – Diana Hankins and Susan Baker
2014 – Kathy Haven
2015 – Tere Tibbetts and Janey Roeser
2016 – Dr. Mireya Ortega, DDS
2017 – Marissa Muscat, MD and Paula Peterson
2018 – Jeanne Nelson
2019 – Amy Jackson
2020 – Suzanne Boyer
2021 – Roberta Strachan