2023 Shattuck Awards honor 12 of the city’s ‘everyday heroes’
Yvrose Bourdeau, a Boston Public Schools teacher for more than 17 years, is known to go above and beyond for the kindergartners and first-graders she teaches at the Mattahunt Elementary School.
Affectionately known as “Madame Bourdeau,” she has a special connection to the school’s Haitian community. She delivered meals to families on holidays, helped students’ family members apply for jobs, and developed a class to help Haitian families build literacy skills at home.
It’s this devotion to her students that has made Bourdeau one of 10 city leaders, educators, and activists honored this year with a Henry L. Shattuck Public Service Award from the Boston Municipal Research Bureau.
Bourdeau said the award came as a surprise. She was nominated by a group of colleagues, including the elementary school’s principal.
“I feel fulfilled when I’m in front of those kids,” Bourdeau said in an interview. “I feel like I’m filling the best role there is to fill being a teacher.”
She particularly enjoys seeing students use Creole to help them learn English.
“Who would not be motivated to be part of that?” Bourdeau said.
The Shattuck awards are presented annually to city employees and civic leaders for their service to the community. They are named for Henry L. Shattuck, a lawyer, city councilor, and state representative from Boston who helped establish the municipal research bureau in 1932.
The public service awards given in his name were started 38 years ago. This year’s group of “everyday heroes” were honored at a celebration on Oct. 5 at the Seaport Hotel Boston.
Two Shattuck City Champion Awards were also presented to nonprofit leaders Paul M. English and Anna Yu.
Each year, the Shattuck Awards Committee receives nominations from workers across the city who believe a coworker should be honored for their hard work in public service.
This year’s recipients embody an array of talent and dedication to helping communities across Boston, ranging from employees of the mayor’s office to nonprofit entrepreneurs.
English, a City Champion Award recipient, founded four nonprofits: Embrace Boston, The Winter Walk for Homelessness, Summits Education, in Haiti, and the Bipolar Social Club, according to a biography provided by the research bureau. The Boston native is described as a “tech entrepreneur, computer scientist and philanthropist,” who has even done programming for the US Air Force.
Yu, the second City Champion Award recipient, is the executive director of Artists For Humanity, a nonprofit that offers Boston teens paid apprenticeships in various creative industries, according to its website.
According to her biography, Yu was born in China and raised in Brooklyn. She has lived in Boston for 19 years.
She focuses on strategic planning, organizational sustainability, and applying diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, her biography said. She does this to “support arts and culture, community, youth and workforce development,” the biography said.
In addition to Bourdeau, Boston employees who received the Public Service Award were Jill Cox, assistant commissioner, Boston Inspectional Services Department; Charlotte Fleetwood, Vision Zero director and senior planner for policy and planning, mayor’s Streets Cabinet; James J. Greene, assistant director, street homelessness initiatives in the mayor’s Office of Housing; Ân H. Lê, policy and research director, mayor’s Equity and Inclusion Cabinet; Wlodzimierz Paluchowski, chief power plant engineer, Property Management Department; Sabino Piemonte, head assistant registrar, Boston Elections Department; Barbara Rhodes, children’s librarian, Jamaica Plain Branch of the Boston Public Library; Mallory Shea, deputy general counsel, Boston Planning and Development Agency; and Lisa Strom, administrative secretary, Boston Parks Department.