Politics
2025 Sammies a ‘stark’ reminder of what government stands to lose
After months of upheaval in the federal workforce, this year’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals — affectionately known as the Sammies — doubled down on a familiar message: Federal employees’ work is important. Public service too often goes unrecognized. Civil servants are one of this country’s most vital resources.
But the 2025 awards program for federal employees, often described as the “Oscars” of government service, also came with a clear warning from the Partnership for Public Service: The Trump administration’s hatchet to the federal workforce threatens not only civil servants themselves, but also the critical services they provide to Americans.
“All federal employees, including our honorees, have been affected by these disruptions,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told the audience at the Sammies ceremony, held last week at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C.
The federal community always looks forward to what’s considered one of its biggest events of the year, but the Sammies took on a much different shape for 2025. While normally an optimistic night highlighting the best and brightest in the federal workforce, this year’s Sammies ceremony revealed a darker undertone.
“Our honorees’ accomplishments are a stark reminder of the services and benefits we will lose if civil servants continue to be traumatized and pushed out of government,” Stier said. “Americans need to understand the stakes — and the Sammies is one way to communicate them.”
Partnership for Public Service President and CEO Max Stier speaks onstage at the 2025 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals ceremony. (Photo credit: Allison Shelly, Partnership for Public Service)
The Sammies program follows a similar pattern each year. After taking nominations for each awards category, the Partnership sifts through hundreds of nominees and selects a group of finalists to be honored during a springtime event. The winners of each category are later announced and then awarded during a gala-style ceremony each fall, usually held at the Kennedy Center.
But this year, following the rapid dismantling of the federal workforce at the hands of the Trump administration, the Partnership expedited its timeline — partly out of a concern that if the organization had waited until the fall, it might not have been able to do the Sammies at all. The Partnership also changed its awards system and opted to honor all the finalists as one cohort, rather than selecting winners for each category.
“It’s a very different event, but the same purpose. We believe that creating a recognition culture in our federal government is vital,” Stier told The Federal Drive ahead of the event.
While political leaders typically speak about the honorees and hand out the annual awards, no current administration officials appeared onstage at this year’s ceremony. Instead, two former Treasury secretaries — Timothy Geithner and Janet Yellen — as well as former White House chiefs of staff Denis McDonough and Jeff Zients, spoke in honor of the Sammies winners. Former chief of staff for President George W. Bush, Joshua Bolten, also recorded a video message congratulating the work of the honorees, which played during the event.
Usually, the Sammies also serve as a rare moment to hear from public servants themselves about their hard work and accomplishments, often spanning decades of contributions to public service. But out of fear for what Stier said would be an “additional risk” to their careers, this year’s honorees simply stood in the audience to be recognized when their names were called, rather than coming up to the stage themselves. As former political leaders called their names and described their work, the honorees received multiple standing ovations from a loudly cheering audience.
This year’s 23 honorees, selected from over 350 nominees, join the ranks of the more than 800 federal employees who have earned the medal since the Partnership started the awards in 2002. Dave Lebryk, winner of the 2025 Federal Employee of the Year award and a longtime career leader at the Treasury Department, was the only Sammies honoree to set foot onstage.
“I’ve actually had a chance to work with some of the most important figures of the past 35 years, Democrat and Republican, and worked on some of the most important issues of the day,” Lebryk told the audience. “Where else could I have had a career like that?”
Lebryk resigned from his long career at the Treasury Department after serving as acting secretary under the Trump administration for eight days. Lebryk left his position following a widely reported dispute with political leadership, in which he denied the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk access to Treasury payment systems containing sensitive information.
“It is important to exercise principled leadership, make difficult decisions, have the courage and conviction to stand behind those decisions and be accountable — and ultimately prepared to accept the consequences of those decisions,” Lebryk said.
Still, Lebryk spoke positively of his experience in government and often unnoticed aspects of serving as a career federal employee.
“What we see here is career civil servants and political appointees working hand in hand to make the lives of our citizens better,” Lebryk said. “As I got to say proudly, and what you will hear civil servants say across the government, is we made a difference.”
Also among the 2025 Sammies honorees were an employee at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who enhanced extreme heat-resistant gloves and other personal protective equipment for firefighters — and a Treasury Department team that recovered a record $7 billion in fraud and improper payments using advanced technology and data sharing.
The Partnership’s awards also recognized a team at the State Department responsible for launching an online passport renewal system for the first time ever, overhauling a passport system that has remained largely the same for the last 50 years. Another awardee was honored for a 64-year career dedicated to improving the production and resilience of cotton plants by eradicating the presence of the harmful boll weevil, while reducing the need for insecticides.
The breadth of the honorees’ work exemplifies exactly what the Partnership hopes to highlight through the Sammies. Federal employees touch virtually all aspects of Americans’ lives, but operate behind the scenes and often go unrecognized.
“Every corner of our government is producing some really important impact for the American public,” Stier said. “And very, very few people know it.”
The public’s trust in government is at an all-time low and continuing to decline, according to years of studies from the Partnership. But past research from the Partnership has also shown that focusing on the role of civil servants, rather than other aspects of the federal government such as Congress, improves the public’s perception of “government” as a broad concept.
In light of those findings, the Partnership for a long time has advocated for elevating the stories of career federal employees to work toward rebuilding that trust — a message that, in today’s context, is perhaps stronger than ever.
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