Howard & Sally Peters Award to Lisa Balbes

We have no idea how, and no excuse for, this bit of congratulatory news slipping our consciousness, but we are now prepared to eat crow and congratulate. Our own Lisa Balbes, Career Services Coordinator extraordinaire, has been selected the 2015 Howard & Sally Peters Award recipient. The announcement dates to last September, so this post is ... whoa! ... very tardy indeed.

The award, sponsored by the ACS Division of Chemistry and the Law (CHAL), “recognize[s] those making significant contributions to, and/or having significant involvement in, alternative careers in chemistry.”

In addition to Lisa’s long, selfless, and effective stewardship of the St Louis Section’s Career Services, Lisa’s professional life as Balbes Consultants has been the very definition of “alternative.” She provides technical writing/editing services as well as career management seminars at universities and ACS meetings. She writes career development columns for InChemistry and Chemical & Engineering News, and is a frequent contributor to the ACS Careers blog (but only if more than 125 posts over the past eight years qualifies as frequent). And her book, Nontraditional Careers for Chemists, makes this award particularly meta.

It’s gratifying to find that national ACS has recognized what we in the St Louis Section have known for a long time: Lisa is a gem.