AFN 2020 Awards Honor Native and Non-Native Leaders

Every year AFN honors those who have made outstanding contributions to their families and the Native community.

2020 CITIZEN OF THE YEAR – Katherine Gottlieb

The Citizen of the Year award recognizes the contributions of a Native person who has demonstrated strong commitment, dedication, and service to the Alaska Native community and to rural Alaska. The Award is bestowed upon an individual selected by the AFN Board of Directors for exemplary work that has improved the lives of Alaska Native people.

The 2020 Citizen of the Year is Katherine Gottlieb, former President/CEO of Southcentral Foundation.

Katherine Gottlieb served as the former President/CEO of Southcentral Foundation for nearly 30 years. At the time she was hired, Alaska Native health care was primarily managed and administered by the Indian Health Service. She led a whole system redesign to transform what was once a slow medical bureaucracy into an agile, customer-owned system of care. She led a workforce of over 2,400 employees in a redesigned health care delivery system that worked together with customer-owners to achieve wellness. She also served on the Joint Operating Board for the Alaska Native Medical Center, as Forum Chair for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and as Chair of the Recover Alaska Steering Committee. She is a past member of the National Library of Medicine Board of Regents and Alaska Pacific University Board of Trustees.

Katherine was the first Alaskan to be named a MacArthur Fellow (2004), as well as the first to receive the Harry S. Hertz Leadership Award (2015) from the Baldrige Foundation and be added to Becker’s “Nonprofit Hospital and Health System CEOs to Know” list (2017). Katherine was also the first health care President/CEO in history to lead an organization into the receipt of two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards (2011 and 2017). Dr. Gottlieb shared her knowledge at Southcentral Foundation’s Learning Institute and has lectured across North America and around the world. She received her undergraduate, graduate, and honorary doctorate degrees from Alaska Pacific University, and another honorary doctorate from University of Alaska Anchorage.

2020 SPECIAL HEALTH AWARD – Dr. Anne Zink

This year the AFN Board of Directors felt a special award was warranted for Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anne Zink on account of her steadfast leadership during the global health pandemic.

Dr. Anne Zink is the Chief Medical Officer for the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Dr. Zink has 13 years of experience in emergency medicine and joined DHSS from the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, where she served as the Emergency Department medical director (2010-18) and also on the Board of Trustees (2012-18).

Dr. Zink is a practicing emergency room physician who is passionate about helping to shape and transform our current health care system. In all the work she does, she strives to create work environments, policies, and practices that are data-driven, foster collaboration and build system efficiencies that put patients first. Her priorities as CMO include building stronger partnerships between DHSS and Alaska’s health care providers and providing support statewide in locally relevant ways to help establish healthier communities across Alaska. Dr. Zink received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her residency at the University of Utah.

2020 DENALI AWARD WINNER – Lisa Rieger

Every year AFN honors those who have made outstanding contributions to their families and the Native community.

The Denali Award recognizes the contributions of a non-Native person who has demonstrated strong commitment, dedication, and service to the Alaska Native community and to rural Alaska. The Award is bestowed annually on an individual selected by the AFN Board of Directors for exemplary work that has improved the lives of Alaska Native people.

The 2020 Denali Award Winner is Lisa Rieger, Chief Legal Officer of Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC).

From the moment Lisa Rieger touched down in Alaska over 30 years ago, she has been focused on addressing social justice issues facing Alaska Native people. She has served as Chief Legal Officer of Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC) since 2005. CITC provides a comprehensive continuum of services in recovery, education, employment and job training, and child and family matters through an interdisciplinary approach to serving families and individuals.

In her role, Ms. Rieger engages in non-partisan research and study in the areas relevant to CITC’s services and to creating systemic change to improve outcomes for Alaska Native and American Indian people with federal and state agencies and legislative bodies. After serving as a public defender in Oakland, California, she was on the faculty of the Justice Center, University of Alaska Anchorage for 11 years. Her research at UAA centered on Indian Child Welfare and the relationship between tribal, state and federal governments.

Lisa then served as in-house counsel with the private for-profit Cook Inlet Region Inc. from 2001 until joining CITC. She served on several state-wide commissions and boards dedicated to improving access to justice, coordinating social services across organizations and assessing opportunities of and barriers to offender re-entry into the community. Ms. Rieger holds a B.A. from Yale University, a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of Law and an M.Phil. in Criminology from Cambridge University. Born in New York City and raised in California, Lisa has called Alaska home for over 30 years.