The Tompkins County Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee on May 28 agreed to restart the Lesley McBean Clairebourne Strength in Diversity Award and to create a small working group to finalize nomination and selection procedures.

The committee chair, Veronica Pillar, who is a Tompkins County legislator and chair of the advisory committee, said the award "seeks to recognize individuals, community groups, nonprofit organizations, and businesses within the Tompkins County boundary that have demonstrated outstanding achievements" and noted the county website already contains the nomination form. "One of our goals for this year was to award it again, and more importantly, create a clear process for awarding it so that we don't have to go through a trying things from scratch thing each year," Pillar said.

The discussion reviewed problems from the award's previous rollout. Rob Brown, a community member appointed to WDIC and finance director for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, said the earlier effort fell short on two points: clarity about the composition of the review panel and insufficient outreach to solicit nominations. "Where we slipped came to, two points in my opinion…we didn't clearly establish our expectation for who was on the review committee…And then the other weakness was in how we pushed out to the community the fact that we were seeking nominations," Brown said.

Committee members debated whether nominations should be solicited first from the public or whether WDIC members should also forward names to seed the process. John Palachik, assistant director of 9-1-1 and a committee member, recommended keeping the nomination window open to outside submissions rather than the committee compiling candidates internally. Several members said they could supply names to get the process moving.

Committee members agreed the final selection deliberations should occur outside of public WDIC meetings. Pillar said the intent is for a separate selection committee — not WDIC itself — to review applications and deliberate off the public record. She noted that if WDIC or the legislature must discuss a named individual before the award is finalized, that portion of any meeting would need to be held in executive session.

Action and next steps agreed to May 28:
- A working group was formed from WDIC volunteers (John Palachik, Annie Corman and Rob Brown, with others offering to join) to draft a streamlined process and timeline for nominations and selection.
- Annie Corman agreed to coordinate the working group's meeting schedule and follow-up.
- The working group will aim to return a recommended process to WDIC at the committee's June meeting; the chair suggested opening community nominations in June with a closing date in July (exact dates to be set by the working group).

The committee also confirmed that a nomination form currently exists on the Tompkins County website under the county’s equity and diversity pages but has not been actively advertised. The working group was tasked with updating outreach steps, clarifying the intended composition of any independent review panel, and proposing whether facilitation support should be provided to that panel. The committee did not select an award recipient at the May 28 meeting.

The minutes for the May 28 meeting were approved by roll call earlier in the session; Rachel Graham moved and Annie Corman seconded the motion, which passed unanimously.