The Presidential Rank awards honoring members of the Senior Executive Service returned April 23 after a year’s hiatus, reminding all of us of the impressive and important work unheralded federal employees do every day.

The Presidential Ranks of Distinguished and Meritorious Executive and Distinguished and Meritorious Professional Awards recognize the top 1 percent of the most senior federal career leaders.

Among those was Karen Durham-Aguilera, the director of contingency operations and chief of the Homeland Security Headquarters for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Durham-Aguilera led the development and implementation of a $14.6 billion hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana. The inner harbor navigation canal surge barrier successfully protected New Orleans last August when Hurricane Isaac made landfall.

Another honoree was Deborah Jin, a fellow with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Jin, who also was recognized in 2003 as a MacArthur “Genius” fellow, produced the world’s first Fermi condensate, a form of ultracold matter similar in principle to the Bose-Einstein condensate, but more challenging to produce and study, and has many new applications. She also produced the world’s first ultracold gas of polar molecules.

A third example is Stephen Trautman, the deputy director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program at the Energy Department. He led the effort to recruit, interview and approve the first group of women to serve in positions on nuclear submarines, opening the door to the nation’s most talented female engineers to become submariners.

These are just three examples of the 24 honorees from 14 agencies who received the 2014 Presidential Distinguished Rank Awards. In all, these 24 people saved the government more than $32 billion. The ceremony also recognized the work of 89 Meritorious Rank awardees.

“If the American people only knew about these accomplishments. If Congress only knew. If Congress only cared,” said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, which hosted the 29th annual event in Washington Thursday night. The White House recognizes Senior Executive Service members for their work as distinguished or meritorious. All are nominated by their agency head and are evaluated for their leadership and results by a board of private sector citizens approved by the President.

Distinguished Rank recipients receive a lump-sum payment of 35 percent of their rate of annual basic pay; Meritorious Rank recipients receive 20 percent of their rate of annual basic pay. All recipients receive a framed certificate signed by the President. SES members make between $119,554 and $179,700.

The White House canceled the awards in 2013, saying because of tight budgets, handing out tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses wasn’t sensible.

The last time the government handed out bonuses and recognized SES achievements was in 2013 for 2012 achievements. The number of awardees continued to drop over the last three years. In 2012, 54 SESers received honors, meaning the number of total awardees in 2014 dropped by 56 percent.

But despite the decrease in the total honorees, their accomplishments are impressive.

“I hope your bosses know just how valuable each of you are to your organization,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was the guest speaker at the ceremony. “If they don’t recognize how valuable you are, they should because you are the best of the best. Together all of you demonstrate the value and meaning of public service.”

Bolden offered familiar but important reminders of what it means to be an SES leader. He said all SESers face common challenges — leading and growing their workforce.

“It’s all about human relationships and understanding who is sitting across from you, what makes them tick and how similar and how different they are to you,” he said. “At NASA, we are constantly emphasizing the critical importance of all of our employees. We tell them to stand up and be counted. All I want from them is to be committed to strive to be the best they are. We ask every leader to be committed to diversion and inclusion.”

Bolden emphasized the need for SESers to ensure their workforces are diverse and inclusive. He said diversity and inclusion doesn’t happen by accident, so SESers need to work at it every day, be open to people of all backgrounds and listen to their points of view.

“You need to be sure you cast the widest net,” he said. “Expand the pipeline, reach out to minority and women candidates early on in the process. At NASA, we are good at recruiting but horrible at retaining them.”

Bolden said part of being a leader comes down three basic principles:

• Know your stuff
• Know yourself
• Do the right thing

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“Everyone could use a little more continuous learning. That’s the only way you will always know your stuff,” he said. “Most important is to know your weaknesses because those allow you to wither under pressure and violate your integrity. It’s the hardest thing to know about yourself.”

Bolden offered a few lessons from his life to the awardees, starting off with know how to ask for help.

He said SESers must believe in persistence, dedication and making the impossible possible.

“You have worked very hard to get where you are and you’ve earned this recognition,” Bolden said.

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