Communicator of Achievement - 2025

Communicator of Achievement Award Nominations will open early 2025

If you have questions, contact Karen Stensrud, 2025 national COA director.  For reference, see the 2024 Nominee checklist and rules below.  These will be updated for 2025.

2024 Nominee Checklist
2024 COA Rules

What Is the Communicator of Achievement Award?

This award, the highest honor bestowed by NFPW, is given to members who have distinguished themselves within and beyond their profession. Nominees presented by state affiliates are recognized for exceptional achievement in the communications field, service to NFPW and impact in the community.

Each year, the COA and runner-up are announced at the Communicator of Achievement Award Banquet during NFPW’s annual conference. Nominees are recognized and honored at the banquet, as well as in NFPW’s publications.

2024 Communicator of Achievement

Gwen White of North Carolina
The 46-year member of NFPW, White, a member of North Carolina Press Club, is a former journalist and now a nonprofit executive director, public relations professional, humorist and motivational speaker. She is a former NFPW president and a charter member of the North Carolina Press Club, where she served four terms as president and currently serves as treasurer.

She worked for a daily newspaper for 17 years and spent 10 years working for weekly and twice- weekly newspapers. She began her speaking career when she first took the stage as a teenager and has never stopped addressing audiences in all 50 states and seven countries.

White is executive director of the nonprofit North Carolina Lions Visually Impaired Person’s Fishing Tournament. Each year she organizes a three-day independent living and recreational event on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for 550 blind and visually impaired people and their guests.

Runner-up for the COA award was Sharon Almirall of Colorado Press Women. From being publisher and co- founder of a community newspaper in Colorado to serving as publisher of a Murphy McGinnis Media newspaper in Minnesota, Almirall had a five-decade career in journalism and communications, marked by courage, perseverance and community service. In addition to her work as a publisher, Almirall was a reporter and editor for newspapers and magazines, and served as a newspaper marketing executive. She has also been the director of communications for a large cathedral, an advertising sales associate, a freelance writer and the owner of a desktop publishing company.  

As a graduate student in communications at the University of Colorado, Almirall was invited to participate in a Poynter Institute seminar with journalists from around the country. She served as president of CPW in the 1980s and is vice president of membership.

The other three nominees:

  • Michael Clay Carey of Alabama Media Professionals
  • Joshua Friedberg of Illinois Woman’s Press Association
  • Heather Syverson of North Dakota Professional Communicators
Past National COAs

About Our COA Director

Karen Stensrud of Fargo, N.D., our 2024 COA director, was named NFPW’s COA in 2010. Stensrud is vice president of brand and executive communications at Bell Bank, one of the nation’s largest family- and employee-owned banks. Karen is serving her seventh NFPW president as an appointed board member. She is a two-time NFPW contest Sweepstakes winner and has twice been honored as North Dakota’s Communicator of Achievement.