Thank you for attending our biggest-ever Common Good Awards!
The Common Good Awards is our annual event to honor individuals and organizations working towards the common good in our state. This year’s awardees are all doing incredible things to improve education in Utah.
Awardees
Awards were presented to:
• Robert and Katharine Garff for their Success in Education Foundation.
• Goldman Sachs for its pay for success program supporting early childhood education in Utah.
• Latinos in Action for its outstanding work to help Latino youth succeed in school and to create leaders in the community.
Hope Eccles, a chair of Envision Utah’s new education initiative, presented the awards.
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Dana Suskind, pediatric surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Chicago—and founder of the Thirty Million Words Initiative®—presented the stunning research about how young brains develop in the first few years of life. Data suggests that talking to babies and toddlers stimulates that development, and the more words a baby hears, the better equipped he or she will be to learn later in life. According to Dr. Suskind, talking to babies and toddlers may be the most important thing we can do to help kids be ready for school and give everyone an equal opportunity to succeed in school.
Thank you to Dr. Ruth Watkins, senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Utah, for introducing Dr. Suskind.
An Education Kickoff
This year’s event also served as the kickoff for Envision Utah’s new education initiative. Working with many of Utah’s top education experts, we’ve identified specific steps that would improve education, and we’re working to help Utahns across the state understand those. Visit our website for more information.
THANK YOU!
We would like to sincerely thank our speakers, awardees, and all the support from the community for making this a sold-out event with our largest-ever attendance. We love celebrating our great community with you all. See you again next year!
