AGRICULTURE

California wine advocacy group Wine Institute announced that Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) is the recipient of its Leadership Award, presented recently during the groups annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Recently, Costa was instrumental in leading the effort to repeal the U.S. Country of Origin Labeling law on beef and pork because it was found to be non-compliant by the WTO multiple times.  Failure to pass this legislation would have resulted in devastating high tariffs placed by Canada and Mexico on wine and other California agricultural exports.

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GOVERNMENT

Sandi Miller, general manager of the Selma Cemetery District, has received the 2016 Cemeterian of the Year Award at the annual California Association of Public Cemeteries Conference in March.

SERVICE CLUBS

The Rotary Club of Clovis was awarded the Outstanding Club of District 5230 for 2015-16 recently during the district-wide conference at the Big Fresno Fair.

ENGINEERING

Four new employees have joined the Provost & Pritchard Consulting Group team.  The new professional staff includes:  Brad Samuelson as a principal environmental specialist and project manager focused on the Merced area; Ryan Dodd as an associate soil scientist, Ismail Oudra, PE as an associate engineer, and Ed Caminata as an assistant engineer, all based out of the firm’s Visalia office.  

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Shirley Melikian Armbruster, associate vice president for University Communications at Fresno State, was honored as Professional of the Year by the Central California chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. During its Image Awards luncheon on May 12, the chapter also presented two other awards to Fresno State’s Office of University Communications for work done in 2015.

REAL ESTATE

Coldwell Banker Premier R.E. announced some new additions: Pep Moreno Asensi and Shannon Recchio have joined the Fresno office and Beth Boren has joined the Madera office.

LEGAL

Donald H. Glasrud has joined Dowling Aaron Incorporated, bringing his 40 years of experience as a business litigation/trail lawyer to Dowling’s mediation-arbitration- referee services.