Navigator Awards

The Sixth Annual Navigator Awards were held June 28, 2005 at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington, D.C.

This year's honorees included:

Governor James S. Gilmore III (former Governor of Virginia and current Partner at Kelley, Drye and Warren)

Congressman Peter Hoekstra (Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

The Honorable Sean O’Keefe (Chancellor, Louisiana State University and former Administrator, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

Lifetime Achievement Award: Professor Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D. (Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University)

Honorees

Governor James S. Gilmore III - Former Governor of Virginia and current Partner at Kelley, Drye and Warren

James S. Gilmore III is a former Governor of Virginia and is currently a Partner at the law firm of Kelley, Drye and Warren.  He practices corporate and technology law and provides advice to clients on homeland security issues in the areas of public relations, information technology and international relations.

As Governor, he created the nation's first secretariat of technology, established a statewide technology commission, and signed into law the nation's first comprehensive state Internet policy. During his term as Governor of Virginia, he chaired the national Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce which was charged with making recommendations to Congress on Internet taxation, an issue of global significance. The E-Commerce Commission opposed taxation of the Internet.

Former Governor Gilmore was Chairman of the Congressional Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction, also known as the “Gilmore Commission.” This national panel was established by Congress to assess federal, state, and local governments' capability to respond to the consequences of a terrorist attack. The panel submitted its findings to the President and Congress every December 15th since 1999. The final report was submitted on Dec. 15, 2003. This Commission was very influential in developing the Department of Homeland Security. 125 Gilmore Commission recommendations were adopted by the Congress and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.

In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed Jim Gilmore to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors and he was elected Chairman of the Air Force Board in the Fall of 2003.

Mr. Gilmore is also president of USA Secure, a homeland security public policy think tank based in Washington, DC.

Mr. Gilmore serves on the corporate boards of the following companies: Barr Laboratories, IDT Corporation, Atlas Airlines, the National Rifle Association and Windmill International. Additionally, he is on the advisory board of Lucent Technologies and Lynuxworks. Jim Gilmore is Chairman of the National Council on Readiness and Preparedness and is a senior consultant to Computer Sciences Corporation and Battelle Memorial Institute regarding homeland security initiatives.

Jim Gilmore was born on October 6, 1949 and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He received an undergraduate degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia in 1971. After a three-year tour as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent in West Germany, he entered the University of Virginia Law School, graduating in 1977. After working for a decade in community service and as a lawyer in private practice, he was elected Commonwealth's Attorney in his home county of Henrico in 1987 and 1991. He was elected Virginia Attorney General in 1993 and Governor in 1997.

 

Congressman Peter Hoekstra - Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

As Congressman Pete Hoekstra represents Michigan’s Second Congressional District in Washington and is one of the few former Fortune 500 business executives in Congress.  Pete was originally sworn in to the 103rd Congress in 1993. He served a key role in the development of the Contract with America, which was instrumental in gaining a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years.

In August, 2004, Pete was named Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He has served on the Committee since Speaker J. Dennis Hastert first appointed him in 2001. In this role, he leads Congressional oversight on issues relating to the U.S. Intelligence Community as the United States defends itself in a global war on terror.

Pete also served as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in the 104th, 105th and 106th sessions of Congress, and authored a variety of studies and reports, including Education at a Crossroads, Crossroads 2000 and the American Worker Project.
 
For his work in Congress, Pete has received numerous awards, including the 2004 U.S. Chamber of Commerce "Spirit of Enterprise" award, the 2004 "Hero of the Taxpayer" award from Americans for Tax Reform, the 2003 "Taxpayer Superhero" Award from the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, "Public Official of the Year" Award for 2000 from Habitat for Humanity of Michigan, and the "Faith, Family and Freedom" and "True Blue" awards from the Family Research Council. He has also been recognized by the National Association of Manufacturers.

Pete is a graduate of Holland Christian Schools, holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Hope College in Holland and holds a master’s of Business Administration from the University of Michigan. Prior to his election to Congress, he worked for 15 years at Zeeland, Mich.-based office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller Inc., where he held the title of Vice President of Marketing.

Pete lives in Holland, Michigan, with his wife, Diane, and their three children, Erin, Allison and Bryan. He was born on Oct. 30, 1953, in Groningen, the Netherlands, and immigrated to Michigan with his family at the age of 3, making him one of the few members of Congress who were not born in the United States.

 

The Honorable Sean O’Keefe - Chancellor, Louisiana State University and former Administrator, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Honorable Sean O’Keefe is the 7th Chancellor of the Louisiana State University and A&M College.  The LSU campus in Baton Rouge is the state's flagship student centered research institution.

He previously served on four separate occasions as a Presidential appointee.  Most recently he served as the 10th Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration until February 2005. O'Keefe joined President George W. Bush’s Administration as the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget until December 2001.

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, he was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He also served as the Director of National Security Studies and, previously as Professor of Business Administration at the Pennsylvania State University.  Appointed as the Secretary of the Navy in 1992, O'Keefe previously served as Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Defense, and as a member of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations staff.

Sean O'Keefe is a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. In 1993 he received the Distinguished Public Service Award. He was also the recipient of the Department of the Navy's Public Service Award in December 2000.  Sean O'Keefe earned his Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and his Master of Public Administration degree from The Maxwell School.  He is married to Laura McCarthy O’Keefe, and they have three children Lindsey, Jonathan and Kevin.

 

Lifetime Achievement Award: Professor Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D. - Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

Edward O. Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in a series of towns in Alabama and Florida as well as Washington, D.C. After earning a B.S. and M.S. in biology at the University of Alabama, he joined the graduate program at University of Tennessee for a year, then transferred to Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1955. From 1953 to 1956 he was a Junior Fellow in Harvard’s Society of Fellows. In 1956 he joined the Harvard faculty, where he is now (in 2004) Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology.

Wilson has conducted research and traveled extensively in many parts of the world.

Early in his career, Wilson conducted work on the classification and ecology of ants in New Guinea and other Pacific islands, and in the American tropics. In 1963 this work and his conception of species equilibrium led him to the theory of island biogeography.  His work has influenced the discipline of ecology and become a cornerstone of conservation biology.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Wilson also played a key role in the development of the new field of chemical ecology. With several collaborators he worked out much of the pheromone language of ants, and created the first general theory of properties of chemical communication in animals. Because most plants, animals, and microorganisms communicate by pheromones, the importance of this work is considerable. In  2003 he published Pheidole in the New World, A Dominant, Hyperdiverse Ant Genus, a monograph of 19 percent of the known ant species of the Western Hemisphere. Of the 624 species thus covered, 337 were new to science.

By the late 1970s, Wilson was actively involved in global conservation, adding to both original research and the promotion of biodiversity research. His 1984 work, Biophilia, and the 1988 volume Biodiversity, introduced these terms, which are now in universal usage. These works were very influential in creating the modern conservation ethic and the field of biodiversity studies.
Wilson has become evermore involved in the global conservation movement, authoring books and articles on the subject, and lecturing in many countries.  He has served on the boards of directors of the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund, and has been a key consultant of the New York Botanical Garden, Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and many other environmental and scientific organizations.

In 1971 Wilson published The Insect Societies, applying population biology to ants, social bees, social wasps, and termites.  This work introduced the new discipline of sociobiology, the systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior in all kinds of organisms. In 1975 he published Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, which became the founding text of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, and has been called “the most important book on animal behavior of all time.” Sociobiology: The New Synthesis also included a brief but highly controversial analysis of the origins of human nature.

In 1998 Wilson extended his program of evolutionary thought in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which argued for a reversal of the current fragmentation of knowledge and
postmodernist ideologies and a return to the ideals of the original Enlightenment, including bridging of the sciences and humanities. He is currently working on books on the theory of evolutionary forces and (with Bert Hölldobler) the biology of superorganisms.

The more than 100 honors received by Wilson from around the world in science and letters include the National Medal of Science, two Pulitzer Prizes for Non-fiction (for On Human Nature and, with Bert Hölldobler, The Ants), the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (given in fields of science not covered by the Nobel Prize), Japan’s International Prize for Biology, the Prix de Institut de Vie, Paris, Italy’s Nonino Prize in science and letters, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, the Gold Medal of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the Audubon Medal of the Audubon Society, the Benjamin Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society, and Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal International Prize for Science. He also received both of the teaching prizes voted by the students of Harvard College. In 1995 he was named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time Magazine, and in 2000 one of the century’s 100 leading environmentalists by both Time and Audubon Magazine.

Wilson lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, with his wife Irene. A daughter, Catherine, and her husband Jonathan, reside in nearby Stowe.