Signature awards.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Each year, TIAW bestows the Lifetime Achievement Award whereby we recognize one woman who has truly made a difference in the lives many, many women of over years – and likely decades.
May Lu – 2024 Lifetime Achievement Awardee
May Lu has spent more than 30 years working for women, girls, and others around the world. She has helped educate girls in Nepal, immunized children in India, supported girls in Uganda who have learned to sew menstrual belts, and helped people in Taiwan who are blind.
May has also collaborated with Rotary clubs in Nepal and India on clean water and sanitation projects. In 2011, she returned once more to India to join local volunteers in campaigns to immunize children against polio and other diseases that can be prevented by vaccines. Her other philanthropic efforts include working with World Vision International in Romania to provide school supplies and visit children she has helped.
She has served as world vice president of Femmes Chefs d’Entreprises Mondiales (FCEM), vice president of the National Council of Women of Taiwan, and president of two local business groups. May has received numerous national and international awards, including being one of our 2015 World of Difference Awardees. She has also been recognised by being the first recipient of Rotary International’s Sylvia Whitlock Leadership Award and being awarded Acquisition International magazine’s Influential Businesswoman Award.
We are pleased to celebrate May’s service-driven life by way of our Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mandy Goetze Award
TIAW bestows the Mandy Goetze Award to a TIAW member who has made an outstanding contribution to the organisation, whether it is a long-standing effort or an exceptional achievement in a specific time frame.
Katherine (Kathy) Brooks – 2024 Mandy Goetze Award
Kathy has been involved with TIAW since 2018 where while visiting Diane Tompson (past TIAW president), she volunteered to join TIAW’s board as its secretary. Since then she has continued in this role and in 2023 also became the VP Finance/Treasurer.
Kathy also participates as a judging committee member for the Awards program. She has been a dedicated, valuable, and enthusiastic member of the board.
Since 2018, Kathy has been the treasurer of “Every Woman Can” which provides support to women in various stages of breast cancer in Spokane, Washington. In 2021, she joined the board at Progressions Credit Union; and in 2022 she also assumed the role of chairperson of the supervisory committee.
Kathy enjoyed an extensive and broad 40 year career with the United States Postal Service. Ever the pioneer, she was the first woman letter carrier in Morgantown, West Virginia. Since 2011, Kathy has been involved with the National Active and Retired Federal Employees (NARFE) in various leadership positions.
Following retirement she began volunteering with Hospice of Spokane. In 2013 she combined her passions of helping others and cooking. Kathy creates a variety of meals from her extensive library of recipes for the clients.
TIAW is fortunate to have such a magnificent supporter of women’s economic empowerment –and another worthy recipient of the Mandy Goetze award.
