Seattle Girls’ School (2706 S. Jackson St.) has announced its 2016 Grace Hopper Award winners: Beth Takekawa, recipient of the 2016 Grace Hopper Award for Exemplary Leadership, and Kristin Laidre, recipient of the 2016 Grace Hopper Award for Outstanding Achievement. They will be recognized during the school’s annual luncheon on May 5.
Takekawa is the executive director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum. She has more than 25 years experience in community economic development, working in the private, public and nonprofit sectors in program development, finance and administrative management.
She serves on the Washington State Arts Commission, as well as on the boards of the Downtown Seattle Association and International District Emergency Center. She is a 2011 Salzburg Global Seminars Fellow,one of 56 leaders from museums and libraries worldwide invited to the Salzburg, Austria, convening to discuss the era of participatory culture.
Takekawa was a National Planning Committee member for the Minidoka National Historic Site, established to remember the U.S. government’s World War II incarceration of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
Laidre is a principal scientist at the Polar Science Center’s Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington and is an assistant professor at UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences.
As a post-doctoral fellow at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk, she studied arctic animals, in particular the narwhal and the polar bear using NASA satellites.
For information about the awards luncheon, visit www.seattlegirlsschool.org.