Juma Ventures' McKenzie Stewart Recognized as High-Performing Human Service Professional by Superstar Foundation

The Superstar Foundation, an organization that seeks to pay great human services professionals great pay for great work, has recognized McKenzie Stewart, Youth Development Coordinator for Juma Ventures based in San Francisco, Calif., as a 2012 Veronica Award winner. These awards are given to direct service professionals who demonstrate outstanding performance in promoting transformational relationships with the participants they serve.

McKenzie has been recognized for her passion and dedication to seeing positive change in the lives the San Francisco and Oakland-area youth she works with. She not only is successful in working with youth to achieve academic goals, she has also developed a strategic approach to be as impactful in her work as possible, and has inspired her colleagues to use data in more effective ways. McKenzie has been highly successful in helping her students achieve key outcomes: 100% of her students are on track academically; 50% of students have improved their GPA since they began working with her; and more than two thirds of her students had exceeded college savings goals at the beginning of their senior years.  McKenzie’s work has been instrumental in helping Juma identify effective strategies to be more impactful and expand leadership programs for youth.

“I am truly honored to be receiving this award. It is not often that direct service professionals are recognized for their hard work and dedication,” McKenzie said. “Though my time at Juma has been brief I have gained and learned so much while here.  I cannot deny the significance this organization has played in my development. I know it is my responsibility to support the development of my youth but they have had a greater impact on me then they will ever know.”

Since 2008, the Superstar Foundation has used the Veronica Awards to recognize human services professionals who keep the transformational relationship with their participants at the core of their work and who demonstrate the effectiveness of that approach through measured outcomes. Veronica Award recipients receive a check from the Superstar Foundation and have their stories memorialized at Social Solutions’ office in Baltimore and an online hall of fame. In addition to McKenzie, staff members from Congreso de Latinos Unidos, Seattle Jobs Initiative, and West Sound Youth for Christ have received a total of $20,000 in Veronica Awards from the Superstar Foundation this year. 

The awards themselves are named after the mother of entrepreneur Steve Butz, as his mother was committed to various social causes and laid the foundation of a strong social consciousness in her children.

“I am deeply proud of the 2012 Veronica Award winners. They are not only doing great work but have the data to back it up,” said Steve Butz, CEO of Social Solutions. “These human service workers can proudly say they are the best in their field and can inspire their colleagues to learn how to become even better at improving lives because they have both the data and inspirational success stories.”

The Superstar Foundation will be accepting applications in fall 2013 for next year’s Veronica Awards; information will become available over the coming months at www.superstarfoundation.org.

About Social Solutions

Social Solutions is the leading provider of performance management software for human services, connecting efforts to outcomes, people to social services, and service providers and communities to funders. The company’s Efforts to Outcomes (ETO™) software goes beyond case management, and enables public, private, and nonprofit organizations, such as Harlem Children’s Zone®, Catholic Charities, Annie E. Casey Foundation, HUD, and cities such as Boston and Hartford to collaborate, save time, and improve service quality and effectiveness. Thousands of service providers, collaboratives, funders, evaluators, and government organizations use ETO software as they work with over 12 million participants each day

About Superstar Foundation

The Superstar Foundation is an organization committed to recognizing and rewarding great human service professionals for the invaluable work that they do. Dedicated to expanding the use of highly intentional, transformative relationships as the core of social services, the Superstar Foundation has administered the annual Veronica Awards since 2008. The Veronica Awards highlight and reward the efforts of the high-performing direct service professionals who embody this philosophy and have the data to demonstrate their performance