Although 2025 has been a difficult 12 months on quite a few fronts, The Occasions editorial board’s seek for folks and businesses which have made our area and state higher, in large methods and small, was not tough in any respect. Powerful occasions expose the mettle of fine folks.
If there’s a theme this 12 months, it might be about these having the bravery to face up for what’s proper, whether or not to fellow occasion members or Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the courthouse. There are additionally helpings of savvy management, independence and difficult of the established order.
Bless them, each one.
State Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline: The Democrat has a powerful document advancing laws that has helped many within the areas of home violence and substance abuse. However this 12 months, this chief shared her revelation in an op-ed that payments she supported, meant to redirect juveniles entangled with the authorized system, had disappointing outcomes. As she watched juvenile violence enhance, sharing moments with grieving households, she modified her thoughts and desires a unique strategy.
The insurance policies had been all well-intended, she wrote. “However within the collective, they’ve systematically eliminated practically all avenues to intervene with struggling youth earlier than it’s too late.”
Steve Nevey, Washington State Ferries chief: He took the helm in 2024, tackling the unenviable job of restoring belief within the nation’s largest ferry system after our community of marine highways suffered underneath years of atrophy and mismanagement. A lifelong mariner and former senior supervisor at Holland America Group, Nevey has stewarded the state’s return to nearly full domestic service this year. Even with practically 500,000 extra riders this summer time than final, canceled sailings continued to fall. Nevey’s initiatives to lift morale among the many workforce embrace weekly updates masking all the things from rescued overturned kayakers to shining the handrails. Constructing again battered public confidence within the system will take time, however Nevey has proven he’s as much as this herculean job.
Maritza Rivera, Seattle Metropolis Council member: Representing Northeast Seattle, Rivera sponsored profitable laws within the metropolis’s Complete Plan that helped save trees. Earlier this 12 months, Rivera shepherded the Households, Training, Preschool & Promise Levy by way of the council, guaranteeing that the proposal despatched to voters included investments that truly work. The levy was accepted by 80%.
TVW: This gem of a public company opens the doorways of state authorities to folks throughout Washington. Since 1995, TVW has lined legislative conferences, judicial hearings and notable enterprise affiliation confabs. It additionally provides a sensible number of initially produced — and award-winning — programming. Its founding rules embrace open authorities, nonpartisan protection and civics training. Its recordings and broadcasts of presidency have turn out to be much more invaluable as information organizations, each print and broadcast, have gone out of enterprise or made steep cuts. It doesn’t matter what, TVW exhibits up.
Matt Payne: A former Marine who labored in high-risk international locations as an expat, Payne stated he typically felt he didn’t belong wherever. He discovered his place over the summer time, exhibiting up on the King County Courthouse to assist people at risk of being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement brokers. Throughout Seattle Metropolis Council testimony, he stated he couldn’t stand by as “ICE took my neighbors.” He would hand out “know your rights” paperwork and typically observe inside, exhibiting assist for immigrants and their legal professionals, lecturing ICE brokers on the Structure or simply serving as a pleasant presence.
Gina Topp, Seattle Faculty Board president: A lawyer who’d beforehand labored for King County, she seemingly had no thought how a lot weight she’d should shoulder when she ran for Seattle Faculty Board in 2023. After only one 12 months, she was made president of the seven-member body — answerable for oversight of a $1.3 billion annual price range and main a famously fractious group of co-directors.
However Topp’s type — considerate and deliberate — has cooled the warmth amongst households nonetheless uncooked about proposed faculty closures. Concurrently, she spearheaded the rent of a promising new superintendent. Many challenges stay, not least closing Seattle Public Colleges’ hefty deficit and reversing enrollment declines. However Topp has already weathered a wild first 12 months and impressed even longtime SPS critics as somebody who would possibly be capable of lead the district towards brighter days.
Trevor Greene, Yakima faculties superintendent, and Kelly Aramaki, Bellevue faculties superintendent: This duo has accomplished extra to nudge Washington towards rethinking the way in which it funds public faculties than anybody in latest reminiscence. And they’re an unlikely pair. Greene, who grew up on the Yakama reservation, oversees the high-poverty Yakima public faculties. Aramaki leads the Bellevue Faculty District, one of many state’s wealthiest. Each acknowledge that present formulation aren’t working nicely for anybody, they usually convened a number of dozen fellow superintendents to make that case to legislators. It is a heavy elevate. Few folks even perceive faculty finance, not to mention have an urge for food for tearing up Washington’s mannequin. However because of Greene’s and Aramaki’s work — and the truth that extra districts than ever are in dire monetary straits — lawmakers are taking them critically. Even state faculties chief Chris Reykdal, not often known as a vocal advocate for reform, has weighed in, saying the time has come to make systemic modifications for the longer term.
John Houston: Houston spent years advocating on behalf of his household, whose land was taken by the Renton Faculty District by way of eminent area, or the specter of it, within the Sixties. The district stated the plan was to construct a brand new faculty, which by no means occurred. As a substitute, a long time later, the district offered the land to builders. Houston’s tenacious advocacy and media consideration impressed Senate Invoice 5142, which was signed into legislation by Gov. Bob Ferguson. It requires faculty districts to provide households the prospect to repurchase their actual property if it isn’t put to public use. Houston’s mission additionally put the highlight on the lack of generational wealth many Black households skilled by way of authorities actions.
