Becky Pringle

On June 26, 2024, in Washington, DC, GAIN Power will present Becky Pringle with the Lee Saunders Labor Leadership Award as part of our Powerful IDEA Awards Program. This program recognizes the talent and leadership, organizations, programs, communications, and technology powering progressive politics and Impacting Democracy, Elections, and Advocacy. The Awardees Program will highlight nine special awardees and 41 community-nominated and voted awards. GAIN Power is a platform for the professional community of people and organizations powering progressive politics. The Powerful IDEA Awards are an annual industry program to celebrate and elevate the professional community, making our democracy work.  

Award Purpose

This award was created to recognize Organized Labor as the progressive movement’s backbone and honor the individuals who fuel the Labor Movement forward. We are grateful for the labor movement’s work to lift workers’ voices everywhere – including the workforce that powers progressive politics.

Awardee

This year, we are presenting the Lee Saunders Outstanding Labor Leadership Award to Becky Pringle, President of the National Education Association.

About Becky Pringle

Becky is a fierce social justice warrior, a defender of educator rights, an unrelenting advocate for all students and communities of color, and a valued and respected voice in education. A middle school science teacher with 31 years of classroom experience, Becky is singularly focused on using her intellect, passion, and purpose to unite the members of the largest labor union with the entire nation and using that collective power to create the racial and social justice that forms the building blocks of education justice.

Leadership and Dedication

Becky is a strategic, dedicated, tireless union leader motivated by what is best for students and educators who have dedicated their lives to teaching, nurturing, and supporting them. Her passion for students and educators and her firsthand classroom experience equip her to lead the movement to reclaim public education as a common good.

Pandemic Response and Advocacy

Becky was elected in 2020 as COVID-19 ravaged Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities nationwide. When the pandemic shuttered the nation’s schools, Becky helped to focus the nation’s attention on ways in which the crisis laid bare and exacerbated inequities that have for generations existed in schools, colleges, and communities nationwide—inequities that Becky herself encountered as a student and has fought against for her entire career as an educator.

Recognition

GAIN Power is honored to recognize Becky with the Lee Saunders Outstanding Labor Leadership Award for her years of work advocating for her members and building a stronger labor and progressive movement.

Additional Information

For more information about Becky’s leadership, visit her NEA leadership page.

And follow Becky Pringle and the NEA on X.