YWCA of Lubbock to honor 2023 Women of Excellence

The YWCA of Lubbock presents its annual awards and celebration dinner honoring the 2023 Women of Excellence on Thursday, March 9, at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center.

In its 35th year, the Women of Excellence program honors women of Lubbock who have "achieved excellence in their careers or professions and whose contributions to business, industry, community organizations and our community are crucial to the success of the same."

The event kicks off with a reception at 6 p.m. followed by the dinner at 6:30 p.m. in the Civic Center Banquet Hall.

Tickets for the event are no longer available.

To date, the YWCA has honored 291 Women of Excellence. This year's honorees include:

The Arts and Culture award will be presented to Emily Wilkinson, director for public art at Texas Tech University System. According to information from texastech.edu, "Wilkinson oversees the Public Art Collection and Program at the Texas Tech University System, which solicits, evaluates, and commissions original public artworks to complement construction projects undertaken by the Office of Facilities Planning & Construction. She also handles the upkeep, maintenance, and public education of the artworks in the collection."

The Government category award will be presented to Olivia Boggs, investigator with the Lubbock Police Department. She has been with the department since 2005, focusing on crimes against children.

The award for the Medicine category will be presented to Dr. Jessica Gray, a board-certified family medicine physician. Gray completed her education at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center School of Medicine and completed a residency at the Texas Tech Family Medicine residency program, where she also served as Chief Resident. She joined the UMC Physicians group, where she currently works as a family medicine physician with a focus on women’s and adolescent health, according to information from UMC Physicians.

The Social Justice award will be presented to Megan Estrada, director and founder of the Hub City Outreach Center, which provides a basic necessities closet, education assistance, family food assistance, substance abuse prevention services, wellness presentations, private guidance, personal change resources and community involvement, according to the organization's website.

The Education award will be presented to Lisa Stane, president of the Sharp Academy/Lubbock Learning Difference Center. Sharp Academy helps kindergarten through 12th-grade students with dyslexia, ADHD, GT and other language processing disorders, and college prep education for any student.

The Human Services award will be presented to Traci Cheek, director of advancement for the Texas Girls and Boys Ranch. The ranch offers counseling, tutoring, and other specialized services to homeless, neglected and dependent children across the South Plains, according to its website.

The Professional category award will be presented to Murvat Musa, executive director of the Reese Technology Center. The center is a business park focused on technology, research, education, engineering and manufacturing trades.

The 2023 Youth Leadership award will be presented to Gabriella Contreras, a senior at Lubbock-Cooper High School.

The Jane O. Burns Award will be presented to Nanette Deso, Executive Vice President at Lone Star State Bank and treasurer of the YWCA Board of Directors.

Jane Burns is the former Frank M. Burke Chair in Taxation at Texas Tech University Rawls College of Business. "As a young female in the 60s and 70s with a passion for accounting, she often found herself to be the only woman in the room a trend that would continue for years," according to information from Texas Tech.

Growing up in rural Kentucky, Burns graduated from the University of Louisville, and was only the third woman in the state of Kentucky to pass the CPA exam. As she pursued an MBA, she was the only woman enrolled in the program. She and her husband, Hank, moved to Pennsylvania, where Burns would go on to become the first woman to earn a PhD in Business at Penn State, according to a story from Texas Tech.