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About

The AWS Champions program, recognizes, celebrates, and supports organizations and individuals driving digital transformation with cloud computing. This program acknowledges customers that have used Amazon Web Services (AWS) products and services in innovative ways to improve the service to their communities, constituents, staff, students, faculty or researchers. Champions' experiences and success stories serve as inspiration for other education, state and local government, EdTech and GovTech customers to reference as they think about their own digital transformation journey.

Explore the AWS Champions below to learn more about each Champion and how they are using AWS to support their mission.

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Showing results: 1-15
Total results: 66
  • New Heroes

No champions found matching that criteria.

  • Local Government

    The City of Fishers, Indiana, has approximately 100,000 constituents and is located just north of Indianapolis. Comprised of 38 square miles, Fishers has grown rapidly over the past few decades. The city‘s comprehensive plan, “Fishers 2040,” provides a vision of Fishers as a smart, vibrant, and entrepreneurial city that provides an exceptional quality of life and fosters a culture of innovation and resiliency.

    Champion since 2023
  • State Government

    The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) has the mission to provide secure and quality digital information, services, and platforms to customers and constituents when and where they need them. This includes services to over 42,000 statewide employees as well as nearly seven million constituents. EOTSS is an advocate for digital transformation, leveraging the power of cloud computing to fundamentally change the way they operate and provide services.

    Champion since 2023
  • Local Government

    The North Central Texas Emergency Communications District (NCT911) is responsible for supporting 40+ Emergency Communication Centers (ECCs) in 14 counties and 157 municipalities surrounding the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. NCT911 is an early adopter in the 9-1-1 space and is engaging in immense digital transformation by leveraging AWS partners experienced in 9-1-1 and GIS systems. NCT9-1-1 believes in solving people problems with technology. Solutions support multiple agencies, assets and personnel. Speed, redundant architecture, resiliency, and very low utility systems are vital in 9-1-1 and can be achieved with the use of AWS Graviton processors.

    Champion since 2023
  • Local Government

    The New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a public benefit corporation responsible for public transportation in the New York City metropolitan area of New York. The MTA is the largest public transit authority in the United States, serving 12 counties in downstate New York, along with two counties in southwestern Connecticut under contract to the Connecticut Department of Transportation. MTA carries over 11 million passengers on an average weekday systemwide, and over 850,000 vehicles on its seven toll bridges and two tunnels per weekday.

    Champion since 2023
  • State Government

    The State of Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) has eight agencies within the Amazon Connect call center. These agencies include the Economic and Employment Services, Protection and Reporting Center, Low Income Energy Assistance Program, Vocational Rehabilitation, Department of Corrections, Foster Care and Child Care, Customer Service, Collections and P-EBT. The call center includes 1,319 supervisors and agents that service an inbound call average of 45,000+ calls a month.

    Champion since 2023
  • State Government

    The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) embraced the cloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2018 and has since completely reinvented the way they use technology to protect, maintain, and improve the health of all Minnesotans. Through its partnership with the state’s IT agency, Minnesota IT Services (MNIT), MDH has taken a holistic approach to not only embracing cloud infrastructure but transforming into a DevOps organization.

    Champion since 2023
  • GovTech

    Acentra Health combines public sector knowledge, clinical expertise, and technological ingenuity to modernize the healthcare experience for state and federal partners and their priority populations. With headquarters in McLean, Virginia, the company’s 3,200 global employees work across 22 U.S. office locations and one India office. From designing and developing advanced claims, encounter, and provider solutions that drive efficiency and cost savings to delivering clinically focused service models for care management, clinical assessments, and quality oversight, Acentra Health’s services support 45+ state agencies and 25 federal agencies across 12 departments, improving the lives of over 140 million beneficiaries nationwide.

    Champion since 2024
  • EdTech

    Trusted by most state IT organizations, hundreds of local cities and counties and some of the largest and most prestigious higher education institutions, Pluralsight provides the only learning platform dedicated to accelerating the technology skills and capabilities of today’s tech workforce. Thousands of companies, government organizations and individuals around the world rely on Pluralsight Skills to support critical technology skill development in areas that are crucial to innovation including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity, software development, and machine learning.

     

    Champion since 2024
  • Local Government

    County of Greene in Ohio is a suburban county with a population of 170,000 situated between Dayton and Columbus and home to Wright Patterson AFB, the largest single site employer in the state of Ohio. The county IT department provides IT and voice/data services to all county departments.

    Champion since 2023
  • State Government

    In September 2022, the State of Arizona Department of Homeland Security (AZDOHS) launched a new program to bolster the cybersecurity of Arizona’s most vulnerable cities, counties, and K12 school districts. AZDOHS is putting $10,000,000 from general fund appropriations toward helping Arizona cities, counties, and K12 schools strengthen their security posture. The Arizona Statewide Cyber Readiness Program enables local entities to reduce their cyberattack surface by accessing technical assistance and software licenses across five functional areas: advanced endpoint protection, converged endpoint management, multi-factor authentication, security awareness training, and web application firewall.

    Champion since 2023
  • Primary Education

    Don Wolff

    Portland Public Schools

    Don Wolff is the chief technology officer of Portland Public Schools (PPS) in Portland, Oregon. PPS is the largest school district in Oregon and is dedicated to creating exceptional and equitable opportunities for all students. He has devoted his professional career to public education, serving for over 30 years in various capacities. Don has been an elementary teacher, working with students in grades two, four and five, and has been a technology leader for 20 years.

    Champion since 2022
  • Primary Education

    Michael Coats

    KRESA/Southwest MiTech

    Mike Coats spent almost a decade as an engineer with a managed service provider doing Microsoft and VMware engineering and support, before changing gears at Kalamazoo RESA, the local Educational Service Agency for Kalamazoo County in southwest Michigan. Mike now leads the Kalamazoo RESA infrastructure teams, including their Cloud Services team, and is working to “go statewide” to help support any school in the state with their AWS Cloud journey. 

    Champion since 2022
  • Local Government

    The City of Miami Beach is a South Florida island city with a population of over 80,000. The city is forward thinking and always looking for ways to modernize and provide better citizen services. With white, sandy beaches, turquoise waters and an over-the-top cultural scene, Miami Beach attracts millions of visitors to its world-famous shores each year and has a population of over 80,000 residents who live on the island.

    Champion since 2024
  • Higher Education

    John Rome

    Arizona State University

    John Rome is the deputy CIO at Arizona State University. A pioneer in data analytics, he helped build a data warehouse in ASU in the mid 1990s. John was also an early adopter of voice technology (including TedX talk) and was instrumental in the opening of the ASU Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) powered by AWS at ASU’s Skysong campus.

    Champion since 2022
  • Education

    The Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators is comprised of superintendents and administrators representing 56 Intermediate School Districts (ISDs) in the State of Michigan. ISD administrators provide and coordinate essential services to their constituent school districts to facilitate teaching and learning. By coordinating efforts and resources, ISDs provide specialized services to students that would not be affordable/feasible otherwise.

    Champion since 2024
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Program FAQs

  • The AWS Champions program recognizes, celebrates, and supports organizations and individuals driving digital transformation with cloud computing. AWS recognizes AWS Education Champions, AWS State and Local Government Champions, AWS EdTech Champions, and AWS GovTech Champions.

    The purpose of the program is to acknowledge customers that have used AWS products and services in innovative ways to improve the service to their communities, constituents, customers, stakeholders, staff, students, faculty or researchers. Champions’ experiences and success stories serve as inspiration for other education, state and local government, EdTech and GovTech customers to reference as they think about their own digital transformation journey.  

  • Each AWS Champion organization or individual is different and activities are tailored to each one. Examples of activities in which they may participate include:

    • Speaking at conferences, webinars, and events
    • Authoring blog posts, ebooks, or articles about their digital transformation experience 
    • Peer-to-peer networking and support
  • There is no one-size-fits-all list of characteristics that AWS Champions possess. But each Champion shares the AWS mission to accelerate the digital transformation of their organization to improve the experience of their communities, constituents, customers, stakeholders, staff, students, faculty or researchers and share the impact this work has had in their organization and broader community.

  • We are always on the lookout for the next Education, State and Local Government, EdTech, and GovTech Champions. Any higher education individual, EdTech, GovTech, K12, state or local government organization in the United States currently using AWS to transform and advance outcomes can be nominated to be an AWS Champion. Potential Champions are nominated by Amazon employees who can attest to the innovations of the nominated individual or entity. 

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