MIAMI – Mayor of Miami and U.S. Conference of Mayors President, Manny Diaz, has been named one of America’s Best Leaders for 2008 by the U.S. News Media Group, one of the nation’s leading sources of news analysis and service journalism, in association with the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School (CPL).
Mayor Diaz will be honored for this distinction at The National Press Club in Washington, DC, on Monday, November 24, 2008, at 8 am.
“I am deeply honored to be named one of America’s best leaders by U.S. News & World Report,” said Mayor Diaz. “This recognition acknowledges that Miami is one of America’s greatest cities, and is a leading example in building a sustainable future and investing in our residents to create the city we can all be proud of.”
Mayor Manny Diaz
U.S. News and Harvard’s CPL convened and organized a nonpartisan and independent committee to select the leaders, without the participation of U.S. News editors. The selection criteria used by the committee in choosing the honorees included the ability to set direction, achieve results, and cultivate a culture of growth.
“With our Best Leaders issue, we widen the lens to examine people who are showing leadership in unexpected ways across a wide variety of fields,” said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S.News & World Report. “These leaders are creatively working to address the country’s most pressing needs and demonstrate innovation and perseverance at an important time in the nation’s history.”
Featuring some of the country’s most visionary individuals, the Best Leaders issue highlights professionals who continue to offer optimism and hope through their work. The 2008 edition of America’s Best Leaders is available online at www.usnews.com/leaders and on newsstands Monday, November 24.
The 24 honorees are: Lance Armstrong, Retired Cyclist; Founder, Lance Armstrong Foundation (Austin, TX); Dr. David Baltimore, Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology and Former President, California Institute of Technology; Nobel Laureate (California); Regina Benjamin, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, Alabama (Bayou La Batre, AL); Jeff Bezos, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Amazon.com (Seattle); Terence Blanchard and Herbie Hancock, Artistic Director and Chairman, Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance Arts (Washington, D.C.); Fiona Harrison and Maria Zuber, Physics and Astronomy Professor at Caltech and the Chief Investigator for NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array Mission (Pasadena, CA); Chair of the department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Professor of Geophysics at MIT and the Principal Investigator for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory Mission Science (Cambridge, MA); Benjamin Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore); Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President, Children’s Defense Fund (Washington, D.C.); Manny Diaz, Mayor, City of Miami (Miami); Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (Bethesda, MD); Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, Cofounders, Knowledge Is Power Program (San Francisco); Robert Gates, United States Secretary of Defense (Washington, D.C.); Freeman Hrabowski III, President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore); Amory B. Lovins, Founder, Rocky Mountain Institute (Snowmass, CO); Anne Mulcahy, Chief Executive Officer, Xerox (Norwalk, CT); Indra Nooyi, Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo. (Purchase, NY); Linda Rottenberg, Chief Executive Officer and cofounder, Endeavor (New York); Jeffrey Sachs, Economist, Author, Director, UN Millennium Project, the Earth Institute, Columbia University (New York); Steven Spielberg, Director and Producer, Founder, Universal, DreamWorks, The Shoah Foundation (California); Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor, San Francisco Symphony; Founder, New World Symphony Arts (San Francisco); U.S. Junior Officers, U.S. Armed Forces (United States).
