Local women and their many contributions to the region were celebrated on Wednesday night during the Idaho State Journal’s Women of Influence Awards event at the Shoshone-Bannock Casino Hotel in Fort Hall.

Dr. Elizabeth O’Donnell took home the Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of her service as the medical director at Portneuf Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Pocatello. O’Donnell has developed a care regimen for babies as young as 22 weeks in need of hospitalization and she is known for paying special attention to the parents and families of her young patients.

“It’s a recognition of a lifetime of caring for the most fragile babies and their families,” O’Donnell said about her Lifetime Achievement Award. “For me, the most enjoyable and fulfilling accomplishment is not just being able to send these babies home with their parents. There are those who of course not always have a happy ending, but still, these families have learned to support us.”

O’Donnell recently established a NICU Developmental Clinic for discharged babies at PMC. In addition to physical, occupational and speech-language therapy services, she is also collaborating with Idaho State University’s Music Department to bring music therapy to the NICU.

O’Donnell is also known for her valuable mentoring of PMC’s younger staff members.

“I love to teach. I love for (medical students) to be able to join us and help them develop their careers and recognize their passions,” she said.

She has also started programs at PMC to help women new to motherhood as well as mothers battling substance abuse.

O’Donnell said she took inspiration for her career from her aunt who was a pediatrician. O’Donnell said that “from a very young age she would take me to work with her. I always saw the good that she was able to bring people, so that was very inspiring to me.”

There were 13 awards given out for the Women of Influence Awards of 2022 and the remaining 12 honorees were Pamela Hutchinson in Agricultural and Natural Resources; Blanca Guerrero in Arts; Terri Gazdik in Banking and Finance; Lori Barber in Education; Sylvia Medina in Entrepreneurship; Hannah Sanger in Government, Public Service, and Military; Nari Burt Mendenhall in Healthcare; Marsha Lamprecht in Hospitality, Travel, and Tourism; Miranda Marquit in Media and Communications; Ariel Jackson in Non-Profit; Angela Palmer in Real Estate, Construction, and Land Development; and Jennifer Jackson in Science and Technology.

Kicking the event off to a touching start was keynote speaker Shelly Sayer, the CEO of Premier Technology in Blackfoot, who shared some of the challenges she has faced growing up as an independent and ambitious woman. Sayer grew up in a “very small mountain town to a very conservative blue-collar family” with a traditionalist father who had narrow views of a woman’s potential.

She said she holds no ill feelings but is glad to have proven her father wrong.

“I have always been grateful to be a woman,” said Sayer during her speech on Wednesday night. “I have always felt special, maybe even different, but there were times in my life as a child that sometimes I wasn’t sure if it was a burden or a blessing to be a girl. More often than I would like to admit, I heard the following phrase from (my father’s) lips: ‘You cannot do that, you are a girl.’”

Sayer shared how she has pushed herself to be successful and gave words of advice to young and ambitious women.

“I like to make an influence by action and not by word. I just went into it and I just learned as I went along,” she said about her life’s endevors. “Just put your head down and go to work and remember that you know who you are and that you have a path and an influence. Just stay focused and work hard.”

The main sponsor of the fourth annual Women of Influence Awards was Premier Technology, the presenting sponsor was Idaho National Laboratory, and the category sponsors were Health West, Idaho Kidney Institute, Idaho State University, Idaho Central Credit Union, Teton Auto Group, Bannock Development and Idaho State-Civic Symphony.