Texas Sen. Judith Zaffirini, retailer H-E-B to be honored with UT Austin citizenship awards
Beloved Texas retailer H-E-B and the Texas Senate’s longest-tenured member, Judith Zaffirini, will receive citizenship awards next month at an annual dinner hosted by The University of Texas at Austin’s Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life.
The Great Conversations dinner, which will be held March 21, welcomes lawmakers and other civic leaders, as well as ticketholders, from across the state to engage in important conversations about civic affairs in Texas.
This year, H-E-B will receive the institute’s inaugural Corporate Citizenship Award for its philanthropy, critical disaster relief efforts and hunger relief programs that have made it a bedrock of the communities it serves. This was exemplified in H-E-B’s efforts to support Texans during both Hurricane Harvey and the pandemic. One of the state’s largest employers, H-E-B is well-known for its family-owned atmosphere and its success in building an emotional relationship with its customers.
“H-E-B sets the standard for how companies can contribute to the health of their community as an employer, neighbor and community partner,” said Mark Strama, director of the Annette Strauss Institute and a former Texas state representative. “As we all learned during a global pandemic, grocery stores and the people who work there are a foundational building block of civilization, which makes H-E-B such a deserving recipient of this award.”
Zaffirini, D-Laredo, is being honored with this year’s Shirley Bird Perry Longhorn Citizenship Award, which recognizes UT students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni for lifetime service that brings honor to the University community and positively impacts civic life.
Zaffirini, who earned her undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees from UT Austin’s College of Communication, was elected to the Texas Senate in 1986 and, since that time, has never missed a vote. In her nearly four decades in office, she has passed 1,388 bills, more than anyone else in the history of the Texas Legislature. During the 2023 legislative session she marked her 70,000th consecutive vote, a total that now stands at 72,132.
“Senator Zaffirini has been a champion of higher education generally and of the University of Texas specifically,” Strama said. “Because of her continuing commitment to education and to cultivating young leaders, her impact on the State of Texas will be felt for decades to come.”
Zaffirini now serves as dean of the Senate, a role in which she, in her own words, hopes to reinforce bipartisanship, friendship, decorum, and the protocol and efficiency of the legislative body.
“Receiving the Shirley Bird Perry Citizenship Award from the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life is as meaningful as it is memorable,” Zaffirini said. “These two outstanding Texas Exes personified integrity, passion and leadership as they served our beloved alma mater, their own communities and our great state. Having interacted with them in our respective roles and seen them in action, I am keenly aware of the significance of receiving an award named to honor Shirley Bird at an institute named to honor Annette.”
Previous Shirley Bird Perry Citizenship Award recipients have included Linda Addison, founding president of The Center for Women in Law; Larry Faulkner, the 27th president of The University of Texas at Austin; and Jason McLellan, a UT molecular biosciences professor whose patented technology helped create the COVID-19 vaccines.
