Cook County Ag Inspector Tia Parks is Winner of the NAISMA Rita Beard Visionary Leadership Award
Jul 17, 2025 09:52AM ● By Content Editor
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From the Cook County Highway Department - July 17, 2025
The Cook County Highway Department is proud to announce that Tia Parks, Cook County Agricultural Inspector has won the North American Invasive Species Management Association (NAISMA) Rita Beard Visionary Leadership Award.
This award goes to an organization or individual who, through a specific act or group of acts, helped amplify NAISMA’s mission: to empower invasive species management in North America.
The award will be presented at the NAISMA conference in Lake Tahoe, Nevada on November 5, 2025, at the Banquet and Awards Ceremony.
Tia’s supervisor, Cook County Engineer, Robert Kimmel-Hass said, “It goes to show that the work Tia is doing in our small part of the world is being recognized at the national level by one of the largest invasive species associations and we couldn’t be prouder of her!”
About the NAISMA Rita Beard Visionary Leadership Award:
This award recognizes an early-career individual who has shown exceptional dedication and accomplishments regarding invasive species management or educational activities. Rita Beard, a luminary in the federal and private sector of the invasive species world, passed away in October 2016 at her home in Fort Collins, CO. Throughout her career, Rita advanced her vision of coordinating invasive species management on a national scope. By encouraging collaboration from the field to congressional levels, she effectively changed the way invasive species are managed in this country. In addition, she worked to make sure that all invasive species management decisions were based on the latest and best available research and technology, thus ensuring that management decisions were supported by science. Towards that end, Rita spearheaded the development of the original mapping standards for the North American Invasive Species Management Association (NAISMA), which unified management practices to help ensure consistent data collection.
