Hubert H. Humphrey Public Leadership Awards

Nina Archabal recently retired as director of the Minnesota Historical Society after 33 years of service. Archabal was selected to become the Society’s 10th director in 1987. The Society grew significantly during Archabal’s tenure, with the development of the Minnesota History Center as the state’s premier history museum and library, which holds the vice presidential papers of Hubert H. Humphrey and Walter F. Mondale. Archabal established many new and innovative programs across the state, including the Mille Lacs Indian Museum, which was created with the help of the Ojibwe people whose story it tells, and the creation of Mill City Museum, a museum and education center constructed within the ruins of the National Historic Landmark Washburn A Mill on the Minneapolis riverfront. Archabal’s influence has reached far beyond Minnesota, encompassing national and international service to other educational and cultural organizations. In 1997, President Clinton presented Archabal with the National Humanities Medal.

Arlen Erdahl has dedicated his life to public leadership and service, beginning with a tour of duty as a U.S. Army corporal and roles as state legislator, Minnesota Secretary of State and Public Service Commissioner, and Republican member of Congress for the First District. Erdahl had presidential appointments in leadership roles in the Peace Corps, first as country director in Jamaica in 1983 and then as associate director in Washington, D.C., in 1986. He received another presidential appointment in 1989 to serve as principal deputy/acting assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy. Adept at working across party lines, Erdahl served in the administrations of presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Erdahl returned to Minnesota in 1995 and became executive director of the nonprofit Minnesota International Health Volunteers. A committed internationalist like Hubert H. Humphrey, Erdahl continues to pursue international understanding through leadership roles with the Minnesota United Nations Association and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum. 

Anita Patel is vice president of racial justice and public policy of the YWCA of Minneapolis, where she hosts racism workshops and community dialogues and creates custom corporate racial justice training programs for such companies as General Mills and Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi. Since joining the YWCA in 2005, Patel has trained more than 100 racial justice facilitators and presented Unlearning Racism workshops for more than 400 participants throughout the Midwest. A 2004 graduate of the Humphrey School (Master of Public Policy), she is the chair of the Minnesota Women’s Consortium and serves on the board of the Charities Review Council and the Public Policy Cabinet for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.  Patel was named one of the 2009 Top Outstanding Young Minnesotans by the Minnesota Jaycees and one of the top leaders under 30 by Minnesota Business magazine.

Bill Richardson completed his second term as Governor of New Mexico in 2010. He was first elected to office in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. Prior to serving as the state’s chief executive officer, Richardson served for 15 years representing New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. He served in 1997 as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and in 1998, he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. While a congressman, Richardson served as a special envoy on many sensitive international missions. He successfully won the release of hostages, American servicemen, and prisoners in North Korea, Iraq, Cuba, and Sudan. Earlier in his career, he was a staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Hubert H. Humphrey was a member. Among other honors, Richardson has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Journalist and historian Roger Wilkins is a living history lesson. From birth, he was part of the civil rights movement. His mother was the first African-American woman to head the national YWCA and his father was business manager for an early black newspaper. His uncle, Roy Wilkins, was executive secretary of the NAACP for 22 years. Wilkins began his career working for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. His subsequent service in the Kennedy and Johnson Administration included working for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1972, Wilkins began writing for the editorial page of The Washington Post just as the Watergate scandal was breaking. His critically informed editorials about the issues leading up to President Richard Nixon's resignation won him a shared Pulitzer Prize, along with reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and cartoonist Herb Block. Wilkins retired from the faculty of George Mason University in 2010. He is the author of several books, including A Man's Life (1982), Quiet Riots (1988) with Fred Harris, and Jefferson's Pillow (2001).