Operations Engineer, Jenn Miller of Red Willow took home the top prize at the Southern Ute Growth Fund’s Safety and Environmental Achievement Award Banquet Thursday, March 5.

Red Willow’s Vice President of Operations, John Larkin nominated Miller for the award.

According to Larkin, Miller helped identify gaps in processes and helped put in place a lot of policies and procedures to ensure that the company stayed in compliance.

“Jenn has been able to help us get to where we wanted to go,” he said. “With Jenn’s guidance and engineering skills we developed a process of, do it right and do it once. She has done a great job.”

Second place went to Katie Wohlust of Red Willow and third place to Kyle Hunderman, also of Red Willow. Other nominees included, Harley Everhart of Aka Energy, James Gustine and Trent Reeder of Growth Fund IT, Darrin Hayhurst of Red Cedar, Chris Musgrave of Utilities Division, Kurts Prinslow of Growth Fund Real Estate, Elvis Ream of Red Willow and Chuck Thomson of Red Willow.

“There were ten nominees this year … the most ever since we started providing the awards in 2005,” Lynn Woomer regulatory compliance manager with the Growth Fund’s Safety & Environmental Compliance Management Group said. “At the end of the day everyone nominated is a winner.”

Southern Ute Tribal Councilman James M. Olguin said that Tribal Council values safety in the workplace.

“[Council] looks at job safety seriously, we want all of the tribe’s employees going home safe … and you all are doing that, and we appreciate it.”

Councilman Alex S. Cloud couldn’t attend the meeting but he sent Councilman Olguin with a message, “Safety is important and should never be overlooked.”